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I found this sentence "Maybe she just shared in the rent" from a text at LingQ and I think it's a correct sentence.

But why doesn't the sentence need the BE verb after SHE?

What I mean is, why isn't it correct to say "Maybe she IS just shared in the rent"?

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    It's interesting that you wrote I took (not I is took or I am took). It's the same thing, isn't it? (BTW, you should write But why does the sentence not need the verb 'be' after 'she'? instead.)
    – Damkerng T.
    Commented Apr 18, 2017 at 10:56
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    "Shared" is past tense. "Is" is present tense. So when does the action take place? You could say either "Maybe she is just sharing in the rent" (present) or "Maybe she just shared in the rent" (past).
    – fixer1234
    Commented Apr 18, 2017 at 10:58
  • @DamkerngT. I don't know how to answer your question, I don't know I wrote that way, but maybe I got it the mean of why that not need verb 'be'
    – Lai32290
    Commented Apr 18, 2017 at 14:11
  • @fixer1234 Could I say Maybe she WAS just share... instead Maybe she just SHARED...?
    – Lai32290
    Commented Apr 18, 2017 at 14:17
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    The "be" words describe ongoing activity. The tense of "be" determines the past/present/future timeframe, and then the activity verb is the gerund form: "was just sharing", "is just sharing", "will be just sharing". Without "be", the sentence doesn't describe whether or not the activity is ongoing. So it would be "just shared" or "will just share" for past or future. It is always the present at any time "now", the present is ongoing because you are always in it. So you use "is just sharing" for present tense.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Apr 18, 2017 at 17:15

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Too Long; Didn't Read:

With an "is," she is being shared, not sharing.


Stripping away everything except the subject and the predicate (verb, in this case an action verb), you have:

She shared

Although this begs the questions, she shared what? You wouldn't say

She is shared

Because although grammatical, that would mean that other people are sharing her, not that she is sharing something.

Now that we have our base, we can start adding the other descriptive words in:

She shared in the rent

This means that multiple people paid rent, and she was one of them. In my opinion, just saying

She shared the rent

would sound better, but that's neither here not there.

She just shared in the rent

With "just" added in, this means that either she only paid rent, while others paid more, or that the previous assumption was that she paid the whole rent, and newer knowledge indicates that she shared it. I would need more context to be sure.

Maybe she just shared in the rent

With "maybe" added in, this means that the speaker is not sure of the above (about "just").

Maybe she is just shared in the rent

This is grammatical. However, it still means that she, herself, is part of what is being rented, with the add-ons previously described of "maybe" and "just."

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    LOL, I didn't catch that meaning until you posted it. If you ever saw the movie Soylent Green, it's set in the future. In it, some apartments come with a woman as a perk, who the owners can share. So "Maybe she IS just shared in the rent" would literally be that.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Apr 18, 2017 at 20:57

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