Causative have

Y después de ver la pasiva, hoy os traemos un post en el que explicamos la forma causativa: have/get something done. Esta estructura, al igual que la pasiva, es muy común en inglés.

Form

-We form the causative form according to the folowing structure:

Have+object+past participle

-To form the present simple of the causative form, we use the present simple of the verb have , the object of the sentence and the past participle of the main verb.

Jack has his flat cleaned once a week.

-For other tenses, we do the same, but using the corresponding form of the verb have with that which we want to form.

Mary had her car serviced last week (past simple)

The boys will have their eyes tested tomorrow (future)

We are having the living room redecorated (present continuous).

-When we want to refer to by whom the action is being done, we use the agent, i.e. by+name/noun

Mary had her wedding dress designed by Elie Saab

-The negative and the question are formed if we put the verb have into the interrogative or the negative form.

Jack doesn’t have his flat cleaned once a week.

Did Mary have her car serviced last week?

The boys won’t have their eyes tested tomorrow.

Are we having the living room redecorated. .

-In colloquial language we can replace have with the verb get

We will get the broken window replace

-Get is also used to indicate that something unpleasant has happened.

I got my ankle twisted playing football

USE

We use the causative form:

-When we want to emphasise that somebody is not doing something on his own by is entrusting/relying on somebody else to do what the verb says. Usually the one who undertakes to do the action is somebody who does this job professionally. Compare the following sentences:

John repaired his bike

(he repaired it himself)

John had his bike repaired

(He took somebody to repair it. Probably , he took it to a professional who repairs bycicles).

-To talk about something that happened to sombody against his/her will
She had her bag stolen yesterday