WEEK 49 EXPRESING WHEN OTHERS DO THINGS FOR/TO US STRUCTURES

THE CAUSATIVE

The causative form is a structure that we use to express that the subject of a sentence doesn’t carry out the
action but has another person do it for them. It is used to show that someone arranged for someone else to
do something for them. We can say who did the action using “by…”.

For example: “Jenna cut her hair” means that Jenna took the scissors and cut her hair herself.
But if we say: “Jenna had her hair cut” means that Jenna went to a hair salon and a hairdresser cut her hair.
She didn’t cut her hair, the hairdresser did. We could also say “Jenna got her hair cut”. These sentences
have the same meaning as saying “Jenna paid a hairdresser to cut her hair”.

For causative structures we can use “have” or “get” with this same meaning of having another person do
something for you. “Get” is more informal and it is more used when speaking and for imperatives, as in “Get
your hair cut!” meaning “go to the hairdresser’s to cut your hair”.

This structure can be used with “have” or “get” in any of the tenses we have learnt throughout the course,
followed by the object of the sentence and then the main verb of the sentence in the past participle (if it’s a
regular verb we’ll add -ed, if it’s an irregular verb we’ll need the third column from the irregular verbs’ list):

SUBJECT + HAVE/GET (IN ANY TENSE) + OBJECT + PAST PARTICIPLE (MAIN VERB)

PRESENT SIMPLE: “I have/get my car repaired by John at Auto Repair”.

PRESENT CONTINUOUS: “I’m having/getting my car cleaned”.

PAST SIMPLE: “I had/got my hair cut”.

PAST CONTINOUS : “I was having/getting my windows cleaned when it started raining”.

PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE: “I have had/got my phone repaired three times”.

PAST PERFECT SIMPLE: “She had had/got her engine checked before the trip”.

WILL AND OTHER MODALS: “I will have/get my hair cut before my birthday”
“I must have/get my car checked before we go to Seville”.

FUTURE CONTINUOUS: “I will be having/getting my windows refurbished soon”.

FUTURE PERFECT SIMPLE: “I will have had/got my house renovated”

BE GOING TO: “They are going to have/get a new radio installed in their car”.
 WEEK 49 EXPRESING WHEN OTHERS DO THINGS FOR/TO US STRUCTURES

-ING FORM: “She might start having/getting her hair dyed more often”.

IMPERATIVE: “Have/Get your eyes checked”.

BE GOING TO: “They are going to have/get a new radio installed in their car”.

The PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS, the PAST PERFECT CONTINOUS and the FUTURE PERFECT CONTI-
NUOUS are not used in the causative form.

Watch out for questions in the causative form, as “have”/”get” always come before the noun and the past
participle always comes after the noun:

“Are you going to have your hair dyed more often?

We DON’T say: “Are you going to have dyed your hair more often?”