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I've come across a brief overview about a Canadian sales representative that says :

I grew-up in a family business specializing in short-term rental accommodations. Our resort, Tyrolean Village Resorts, was built by my father and uncle in the 1960’s and is now managed by my brother and I. This unique experience has helped me developed my 15-year real estate career in selling and buying short-term rental accommodations and working through the requirements to establish and operate such properties in the area.

I've noticed that he used "present perfect and past simple at the same time" ( has helped me developed ).'

Question:

I'm wondering, what is the grammar rules used here? and if I were to change it to "has helped me develop", would the meaning change?

1 Answer 1

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The sentence as written is simply incorrect. The object of "help me" should be an infinitive. As you stated, "has helped me [to] develop" would be one way of correcting the sentence.

This is the same regardless of what tense the first verb is in. "helped me develop," "will help me develop," "would have been helping me develop," etc. are all correct phrases.

Alternatively, you could use simple past tense in a separate prepositional phrase: "has helped me as I developed my career." In this case, "me" becomes the object of "helped" and the author is stating that he developed his career in the past. In that case, however, I would also change the first part to simple past tense as well, implying that the help and the career development both took place in the past: "this experience helped me as I developed my career."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_of_English_verb_forms#Bare_infinitive

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  • Thank you so much for your great answer, but I've seen so many using this style in the US especially the north, is that a common typo?
    – CryptoBird
    Commented May 8, 2019 at 23:39
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    Beong from the notheast US myself, I don't even know that it is an error that I have commonly seen, but it certainly is incorrect. I have updated my answer with a link to the usage of the bare infinitive, which specifically lists "help" as a verb which takes the infinitive as a complement. Commented May 9, 2019 at 0:13
  • I see, the link was very helpful +1 , in case you would like to see more people using the same style here are a few : binghamton.edu/news/story/1826/…
    – CryptoBird
    Commented May 9, 2019 at 0:28
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    No. This is simply incorrect. This is just a typo. And coincidentally, I was born and raised in Binghamton.
    – Jim
    Commented May 9, 2019 at 6:37
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    @Cryptobird Speaking as an 'other American', "Helped me developed" is wrong. I would post another answer but geekahedron has covered the situation quite nicely.
    – Hellion
    Commented May 16, 2019 at 18:08

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