One of Janet's classes was discussing the causative have, such as "I had my hair cut" and "I had my bike stolen." She noted that the latter can make it sound as if the person caused his bike to be stolen, though that is not the way it is normally used. That set me thinking. To me,
"My store burned down in 1990" implies the poor guy's store caught on fire and burned to the ground.
"I had my store burn down in 1990" implies the same thing.
"I had my store burned down in 1990" implies he hired some arsonist to torch his store so he could collect the insurance money!
I'm glad I learned English as a child, when accepting such subtleties was still easy! Any comments, grammar experts?
Comments
A key difference between the last two examples is that the embedded clause is tenseless in the first and tensed in the second. That is, it makes sense to say "my store [was] burned down" but not "my store burn down". The untensed version describes an event that is given tense by the "I had ... in 1990" while the latter version, already having tense, is given causation by the "I had". Or something like that. :)
Posted by
Peter V.
on Wednesday, September 14, 2005 at 9:04 am
Thanks, Peter. That makes sense, and is something I hadn't even observed, let alone understood.
Posted by
SursumCorda
on Friday, September 23, 2005 at 8:33 am
The English language is one helluva precision instrument but all so subtle that we may sometimes miss the more piquant of its nuances: How often have you heard the phrase, He / She is a “Qualified Architect”?
Does the subtext imply that there is perhaps an unlearned aggregate slurry of “Unqualified Architects” a-building about all around us?
Posted by
Tom Dennen
on Thursday, January 26, 2006 at 2:28 pm
