Had somebody

[oksuz_]

Hi.

He had her enter the room.

What does the above sentence mean? Is it “ he needed her to enter the room?”
Thank you.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

No. We can't tell from that sentence whether he needed her to enter or not. Maybe he did, and maybe he didn't.

What the sentence means depends on context:


- He might have invited her to come into a room he was in.

- They both might have been outside the room, and he asked her or told her to go in.

- There might have been more than the two of them present, and she was the one he wanted to go into the room.


And there are other possibilities. But the sentence is not about whether he needed her to go in.

 

[GoesStation]

The only way I can understand the sentence in isolation is that he made her come into the room.