Have someone doing something

You can use "have" for many different kinds of sentences. One of the often used but not so often taught uses of "have" is to let someone know that someone or something is performing an action on your behalf or on your order.

David has Luke cleaning the table.

In this example, Luke is cleaning the table but he didn't just decide to do that. He likely is doing it because David told him to do it. There is an implied command originating with David. It doesn't always have to be a command however.

David has the computer compiling the code.

In a sense, David still commanded the computer to perform the action but another way to think of it is that the action is being performed for David's benefit.

The patient in the hospital has a nurse giving him medicine.

In the above example, it is very unlikely that the patient commanded the nurse to give him medication. What is much more likely is that the doctor ordered the medicine and this medicine has to be given to the patient at certain regular intervals and one of those occurrences just happens to be taking place at the moment it is being spoken of.

This brings us to another element of the three examples. They each use the ING infinitive which denotes that the action of the verb is happening at the same time as the main verb which happens to be present tense so meaning right now.  However, there is another way to use this meaning of "have" that does not have to include right now.

The company has someone to clean the offices.

In this example the cleaning of the offices does not have to be at the same time as the main verb.  In fact, it almost certainly is not.  By using the TO infinitive we let the listener know that the action is either in the future or, as in the example above, a repetitive action that will happen in the future but also happened in the past.

So, ...

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