In English, sequences consisting of the verb have, a noun phrase and a past participle vary in meaning. This meaning variation has been discussed both in the context of grammatical description and language change, mostly based on a handful of examples. This study seeks to combine theoretical and methodological approaches from construction grammar and interactional linguistics in the description of this meaning variation. Theoretically, this implies distinguishing between abstracted meaning potential and situated meaning of linguistic elements. Methodologically, this means taking both a coarse-grained view by means of a quantitative corpus-based approach that abstracts over a number of instances and a fine-grained view by means of qualitative analysis of talk-in-interaction.
This brief discussion paper is concerned with the sequence [have NP Vpp] and its distinction into a causative and a passive construction, which hinges on the (non-)agentivity of the subject participant, so that the sequence can be seen as ambiguous in that respect. Instead of analyzing these uses as two different constructions, I propose a unified analysis as instances of the affactive construction. This construction has the functional potential of putting primary focus on secondary participants, so-called afficiary participants. The potential ambiguity with regard to the agentivity of these participants is not an issue in usage, as it is only evoked as part of the conceptual content in the background.
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