I would like to learn how can I rewrite the following sentence in the causative form.
" Mary asked Jamie to get her car to repaired"
Can we say
" Mary had Jamie have/had her car repaired "
Thanks :)
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2Mary asked Jamie get her car to repaired." This is not correct English. It should read "Mary asked Jamie to get her car repaired".– tunnyCommented Nov 6, 2014 at 20:57
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2@ Murat: Native speakers simply wouldn't string two syntactically distinct instances of to have together like that. It's "jarring". Colloquially we'd almost certainly use to get in at least one position simply because that's much more common/casual. And if you were going to use the same verb twice, it doesn't sound so bad if you're already in the most casual "register", so "Mary got Jamie to get her car repaired" is a credible, if ungainly, utterance.– FumbleFingersCommented Nov 6, 2014 at 21:47
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...your second question seems to be the same ugly repetition plus an irrelevant extra has just to rub salt in the wound.– FumbleFingersCommented Nov 6, 2014 at 21:49
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1You're just playing with ungainly forms for nothing. People don't even think like that, let alone talk like that.– FumbleFingersCommented Nov 6, 2014 at 22:06
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3Is this some kind of academic exercise or homework problem? Most people don't wonder aloud how "rewrite the following sentence in the causative form." In any case, try, Mary had Jamie get the car repaired.– J.R. ♦Commented Nov 10, 2014 at 18:20
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1 Answer
The answer to your question is tricky. The first example you give is ungrammatical, and so the second example is as much a re-wording as it is a correction.
This feels an awful lot like proofreading, but:
(a) Mary had/made Jamie have her car repaired
Sentence (a) is grammatical, if a little unusual.
(b) Mary had Jamie get the car repaired
As suggested by J.R., sentence (b) is more idiomatic.
