1) One individual had a bullet as a child go right through the left temporal lobe.
2) I had my kids go to bed.
I think '2)had' is 'commend', but I don't think '1)had' is.
then, What does '1)had' mean?
causative-haveverbs
1) One individual had a bullet as a child go right through the left temporal lobe.
2) I had my kids go to bed.
I think '2)had' is 'commend', but I don't think '1)had' is.
then, What does '1)had' mean?
Best Answer
You are correct about #2; had can mean "caused" or "commanded". See definition 6 here.
In sentence #1, the meaning of had is "experienced": he experienced a bullet through the left temporal lobe. See definition 4 here:
I think the sentence is not very well-structured, by the way, because "as a child" modifies the individual, not the bullet! It would read better as
or
As the sentence is, it's a little bit of a garden path sentence, one that tricks the reader into thinking it means something else until more later in the sentence when the reader realizes he has to go back and re-interpret the sentence.
looks like one individual possessed a bullet when he was a child, but then we read
and we have to go back and say, "Oh, it means experienced, not possessed."