Jumping on the grammar train:
(I actually looked this up awhile back, but I couldn't find anything that specifically addressed this issue. If any of y'all know and I do have it wrong, by all means feel free to throw me off.)
I can't stand it when people write/say "I had someone come up to me the other day and they did/said this". Because unless you actually told them to come up to you and do/say whatever, you didn't "have them" do it. They just did it on their own.
Just say "Someone came up to me the other day and said/did this thing." Or "I had an experience the other day where someone came up to me and said X". Or "This thing happened to me the other day where this person did X". Or something along those lines.
Then again, I'm not exactly known for using/speaking the Queen's English (and I did just start three sentences in a row with the same word in the previous paragraph), so it's entirely possible I'm making something out of nothing here.
Not actually incorrect, sorry!
It's just a perfect (i.e. simple, completed past action) construction of the verb. "To have" is such an old word in English that it has actually come to be part of our tense system, and we cannot conjugate our verbs tense-wise without it. For example, "I have been working on this project for ages!" shows "have" in its role as a helping verb. This is the same thing. Technically, for the usage you're looking at, it's a complement to a past participial adjective. "Come" is actually a participle in that sentence, and the "had" makes it into a verb.
The problem is that you're taking the solo meaning of the word "to have" (i.e. "to hold or control") and importing that into the word's use even when it's subordinate to other verbs.
Another reason for the word's variability is that it appears with cognate but distinct usages in Germanic languages, Latin, and French, the three language influences that comprise modern English. So the Anglo-Saxons had a Germanic haben that mixed with the Latin habere and later the French aver, and each of those had its own nuances.
Also complicating this is that your reading of the sentence is also correct: you can have someone go to the store for you, and in that case "have" is stronger within the sentence (the primary action verb instead of the primary helping verb). So the way you're reading the grammar of the sentence isn't incorrect because of grammar or syntax: the only thing that clues you in that the correct reading is the *other* grammatically correct option is the context.
Re: UO Thursday- New Year's Eve!
It's just a perfect (i.e. simple, completed past action) construction of the verb. "To have" is such an old word in English that it has actually come to be part of our tense system, and we cannot conjugate our verbs tense-wise without it. For example, "I have been working on this project for ages!" shows "have" in its role as a helping verb. This is the same thing. Technically, for the usage you're looking at, it's a complement to a past participial adjective. "Come" is actually a participle in that sentence, and the "had" makes it into a verb.
The problem is that you're taking the solo meaning of the word "to have" (i.e. "to hold or control") and importing that into the word's use even when it's subordinate to other verbs.
Another reason for the word's variability is that it appears with cognate but distinct usages in Germanic languages, Latin, and French, the three language influences that comprise modern English. So the Anglo-Saxons had a Germanic haben that mixed with the Latin habere and later the French aver, and each of those had its own nuances.
Also complicating this is that your reading of the sentence is also correct: you can have someone go to the store for you, and in that case "have" is stronger within the sentence (the primary action verb instead of the primary helping verb). So the way you're reading the grammar of the sentence isn't incorrect because of grammar or syntax: the only thing that clues you in that the correct reading is the *other* grammatically correct option is the context.
/geeking out on a Sunday afternoon, sorry.
Been married since 2009.
Unicornuate Uterus (yes I menstruate glitter)
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DD born 2013 (our miracle "you can't have babies" baby!)