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?
