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He had the robot cleaned the house.

I wanna know whether this sentence has any error for following meaning : He ordered the robot to stop on its operation.

As following two have meaning like in the parentheses,

He had the robot cleaned.(The robot was cleaned by him)

He had the robot clean the house. (The robot did cleaning because of him)

putting 'cleaned' instead of 'clean' in the second one, I guessed rarely possible though, makes 'cleaning' finished.

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  • 1
    He had the robot cleaned = Someone other than he cleaned the robot at his behest.
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 14, 2016 at 10:19
  • Are you asking whether causative had + past participle cleaned + direct object house translates to "stop cleaning the house"? If so, the answer is no. He had the robot cleaned the house is ungrammatical. It is mixing a causative-passive construction (where robot is the patient of cleaned) with a transitive construction where cleaned has a second object,house.
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 14, 2016 at 10:24
  • 1
    The present participle is possible with causative have: She had her piano student practicing his scales.
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 14, 2016 at 10:25

1 Answer 1

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He had the robot cleaned the house.

He had the robot cleaned.

He had the robot clean the house.

The first sentence is incorrect grammatically.

The second and the third sentences are correct grammatically. The second one implies that he caused somebody to clean the robot, whereas the third one means that he caused the robot to clean the house.

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