... so many people have me blocked

[yuliyaon]

Is 'People have me blocked' a causative pattern?

Below is a screenshot of a tweet that a student of mine shared with me asking to explain the grammar behind the underlined phrase. Is it a variant of a causative pattern or is it some other structure? I'd appreciate a reference to a reliable grammar guide that explains exactly this pattern. Google search shows a number of sites with "people have me misunderstood" or "people got me pinned as an aggressive person", and my student wants a comprehensive explanation, which I failed to find and provide.

 

[emsr2d2]

Here's the best advice I can give you and your student - don't attempt to analyse Tweets (or any other social media posts). There are multiple errors in that extract, although "have me blocked" isn't one of them. That's a way of saying "have me on Block", meaning they have used the Block facility in order not to see to avoid seeing the writer's posts.

Just for the hell of it, here's the Tweet with the corrections I would have made had someone posted that here:

... because there's there are so much many times that I wanna want to read the replies of to/on a post and just see that so many a lot of people have blocked me, and I'm like that I think "Oh! Okay". Sometimes the people even seem like people I would f**k with.

A huge number of people who make social media posts either don't know the first thing about grammar, punctuation or capitalisation or they don't care. I suspect it's the former, although I also suspect that if you told most of them about the errors, they wouldn't care anyway.

 

[Tarheel]

I don't think the person is blocked. I think the person limited the responses to those on their "friend" list. (I could be wrong.)

Ask yourself how much time you want to use on this.

 

[Annabel Lee]

Is 'People have me blocked' a causative pattern? . . . I'd appreciate a reference to a reliable grammar guide that explains exactly this pattern.

It certainly looks like the causative pattern, doesn't it? Neverthless, it has a different interpretation from the causative and (very probably) a different underlying structure altogether.

If the sentence People have me blocked were given a causative interpretation, it would have to be a habitual meaning: "People cause me to be blocked"; "People order others to block me."

But that's not what the sentence means in context. You can substitute have with have got: People have got me blocked. This shows that what is involved is the main verb have in a special sense (sometimes called "experiential").

The pattern itself has a long history. It's often considered, in historical grammar, to be the forerunner of the perfect. Sentences like I have written the letter may historically have been written I have the letter written.

But sentences like I have the letter written can still be used, and they aren't merely rearrangements of sentences like I have written the letter. Indeed, many sentences written in the perfect cannot be thus rearranged.

I have taken a shower.
*I have a shower taken.

Nor do they have exactly the same meaning. The construction often works when something stative is accomplished through the action of the past-participle verb, often when one wishes to represent that state as an accomplishment:

I have milked the cow.
I have the cow milked.

The first sentence reports something that I have done. The second sentence reports how I have the cow after having done something to the cow: "I have the cow in a state of being milked"; "I have the cow in a milked state."

Of course, I have the cow milked can also receive a causative interpretation: "I have the milkmaid milk the cow"; "I have the cow milked (by the milkmaid)." But that is a different interpretation, involving (very probably) a different structure.

I would love to find a good name for the construction you have asked about (it's one of my favorites). I could swear I came upon a good name for it once, but I've forgotten what it was and have never been able to relocate the reference!

In A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), by Randolph Quirk and other linguists, it's discussed very briefly as a variety of "complex-transitive" complementation with object + -ed participle complementation:

"In this construction . . ., have can have either an agentive causative meaning, or a stative meaning. Hence The guard patrol had two men shot is ambiguous, meaning either 'The patrol caused two men to be shot', or 'The patrol suffered the loss of two men by shooting'. The latter meaning is that of the have-existential construction" (page 1207).

It's because of examples like that one that I qualified what I said above with "often." On the "suffering" meaning, the men's having been shot is not regarded as an accomplishment.

It should be noted that the "have-existential construction" comprises a family of constructions, some of which involve a prepositional phrase or a subordinate clause or a present participle instead of a past participle:

The hunter has the deer in his sights.
I have them right where I want them.
The comedian will have them rolling off their seats.

 

[Annabel Lee]

corrigendum: "such of which" (last paragraph, post #4) should be "some of which."

If I could edit the post itself, I would; but the edit function seems no longer to be available for that post.

 

[emsr2d2]

corrigendum: "such of which" (last paragraph, post #4) should be "some of which."

If I could edit the post itself, I would; but the edit function seems no longer to be available for that post.

I've made the correction for you. Members can edit their own posts for 24 hours after posting.