Hi,
The ‘have leave’ here, sounds like ‘let leave’ though I failed to find the construction in dictionaries. Will you explain it (a couple of examples would be a bonus).
Thank you.
“Nigel Sinclair, the third co-producer of … set up a production team at Friar Park, the Harrison estate, scanning and digitizing materials Harrison was reluctant to have leave the premises.”
Yes, in this case the meaning of “have” is like “let” or “allow (to)”. E.g.:
“I can’t have them take/taking days off whenever they feel like it.”
“I won’t have (=allow/tolerate) any argument.”
Thanks, Dozy, but in your examples (I came them across, too) ‘have’ is followed by a)pronoun, b)noun. Never met ‘have + another verb’ before in the meaning like in the original, did you?
‘have leave’ in the original construction as you have quoted it is incorrect.
My guess is that it should be one of these:
reluctant to leave the premises.
reluctant to take his leave of the premises.
Unless you have missed out some punctuation when you quoted, it’s also badly written.
The “have + verb” juxtaposition in your example happens because the noun, “materials”, has been moved to the front, and the part about leaving the premises turned into a relative clause. The normal word order would be “Harrison was reluctant to have (the) materials leave the premises”. My first example could be similarly reordered to make “These are the sort of people I can’t have take/taking days off whenever they feel like it”.
I think you may have misread it Beeesneees. It’s not Harrison who is leaving (or not leaving) but the materials.
Oh yes, my mistake. My mind split the sentence.
So, the bottom line is smth like “Will you have take me another day off?” or “I did have take him my shoes to show off” could be ‘good English’, or to be on the safe side, one should reword it to not be misunderstood?
Those two sentences are ungrammatical.
“These are the sort of people I can’t have take days off whenever they feel like it”. - your sample, Dozy.
How about: “Those are the shoes I did have take him to show off”?
No, that does not work (if it meant anything, in a strained way, it would mean that the shoes took the person). “Those are the shoes I did have him take to show off” is possible if “did” is being emphasised, perhaps in order to contrast with some other shoes. In this case “have” means “instruct (someone to do something)”.
You’ve blown out of the water all my eggcellent ideas about that side of ‘have’, Dozy. Well, many are doing nicely without it…
"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’”
(Some of the examples here feel a bit strained in isolation, but I’m just using them to illustrate the grammatical structures.)
The basic pattern is “have someone/something do something”:
“he had the materials leave”
“I have people take days off”
“I had the man take the shoes”
We can put the “someone/something” at the head of a relative clause:
“the materials (that) he had leave”
“people (that) I have take days off”
“the man (that) I had take the shoes”
When the “do something” part has an object, we can also put that at the head of a relative clause:
“days off (that) I have people take”
“shoes (that) I had the man take”
Thank you, Dozy, you’ve made it clear as possible. I’m going to have another look at the construction sometime though I suspect the expressions like that are at a premium in ordinary life.
Regards.