have someone to do something

Question

I recently came across a non-native English teacher writing the following in a grammar exercise:

The sports day is next Friday. We will have the final-year students to help us with the sports day. They will be selling tickets to parents and friends who would like to join the day.

I only know the construction "have someone do something", and have never seen "have someone to do something" before until now. Is the second construction possible? And in the example I quoted, should it be "help" instead of "to help"?

Many thanks!

Answer 1

In the sentence We will have the final-year students to help us with the sports day, the construction have X to Y means, essentially “benefit from X’s doing Y.” Thus the title of the popular standard (song) “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” Likewise, one might reply to a child’s query, “No, the baseball players don’t mow the field. The team has a groundskeeper to do that.”

So your sentence means that the speaker is confident that the sports day will not be a problem because the final-year students can be relied on for assistance in running it. A paraphrase is We will have the final-year students; they will help us with the sports day

Answer 2

I think there's a confusion between two similar constructions.

1. Have someone do something
2. WILL have someone TO do something

Construction number 1 -
To have someone do something - means: some explicit/implicit agent will delegate to someone the (task of) something (at some indefinite time in the future).

e.g

[I'll/I will] have my people call your people.

[Let's/Let us] have our lawyers negotiate terms.

Construction number 2 -

We will have someone to do something - means: the agent will have the assistance of someone to do something ( on the specific future occasion under disussion )

e.g

In that noisy atmosphere at least Billy will have his emotional support dog to keep him calm.

At least Billy will have his emotional support dog to keep him calm in that noisy atmosphere.

With/without "to"

We will/We'll have our lawyers negotiate terms.

Sense: Delegation

We will/We'll have our lawyers to negotiate terms.

Sense: Assistance

N.B This sentence may be constructed as so without changing the sense:

We will/We'll have our lawyers negotiating terms.

Sense: Assistance

Hope this helps. Apologies if I've over-explained.. I'm working on it!