I had my head bitten off by an ex-boss once.
I think in this sentence the verb is passive and the tense is past perfect. But there is not "to be". What is the strucuture of this verb? What was the verb form if we used "to be" to make it passive? In which cases we can remove "to be" from a passive verb?
I had my head bitten off by an ex-boss once.
This is a passive causative construction:
The passive causative form can be constructed with “have” or “get,” followed by the object (the thing or person being acted upon), and then the past participle of the main verb.
She had her car repaired.
Had is a causative verb here.
An equivalent passive past perfect construction is
My head had once been bitten off by an ex-boss.
The verb to be is seen in this construction.
