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A friend and I are having a quarrel about the sentence:
"For operational reasons I am not able to downgrade as requested. For this reason we ask you to take it for a (dud) until I've the access restored."
My friend is saying the sentence sounds weird, but I disagree. We gathered that it's using Present Perfect but we're not sure of the placement of the noun (access) and verb (restore + ed) as it also works if we switch them around.
Is this sentence grammatically correct? For what reason?
In English, sentence structure follows the subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, which helps to identify which nouns are subjects (the doers) and which nouns are the objects (the receivers of the action). As noted by the OP, the example uses the present perfect tense, so in addition to the verb itself ("have"), we also have a participle ("received"). Typically, verbs and their participles are not separated from each other, so the most clear and common construction would be, "For this reason we ask you to take it for a (dud) until I've restored the access."
The word order in the OP's example ("I've the access restored"), where the object intercedes between the verb and the participle, is also possible, but unusual. Occasionally this ordering is used in poetry (such as song lyrics) for effect, but in typical prose or conversation it is rare.
You can only use a contracted form of have or is when it's acting as an auxiliary verb. In "I've the access restored", "have" is not an auxiliary verb, so you can't contract it.
You can use the contraction by rewording to make 'have' an auxiliary, as in "I've restored access"; or you can remove the contraction, as in "I have the access restored". Both of those read just fine.
