Hi everyone and welcome back to my channel Learn Academic English where I teach intermediate
and advanced level English lessons for English learners who want to be successful in school and
work and speaking of being successful in school and work you know that in order to
do those things it's really important to have a strong understanding of grammar that helps you
write better it helps you understand more when you read it helps you speak to people correctly
it helps you understand people when you are listening to them and one grammar lesson that
can be a little bit tricky for people is what's called passive causatives in my last video I
taught you guys about causative verbs but in today's lesson i'm going to cover what are called
passive causatives which are very common but a little bit tricky so first let's take a
look at what causative verbs are and you can learn more in my video that i'll link above
but causative verbs are verbs that show that one person causes someone else
to do something and these verbs are make get have help let and there are some other ones like force
but those main ones are make let have help and get if we look at this example I have my kids
do chores I cause or I influence them to do something let's look at the grammar this is
the main verb of the sentence and then we have the person who is going to do the second action
my kids do chores who does the chores my kids do the chores but I cause them or I influence them or
I force them to do it if you look at the second one I make them do homework make is means that
it's um I'm forcing them it's a strong meaning and again make is the main verb of the sentence
them is the person who's going to do the action so I cause or I force and then they do it so in these
sentences we really have like two subjects and verbs we have the main subject and the main verb
and then we have the person who does the action of the second verb passive causatives are different
because in passive causatives we don't know or we don't care who did the second action
so the person who does it we don't know or we don't care who it is it's not important this is
like other passive verbs that the agent or the person who does the action is not known or it's
not important so we leave it out so just like in a regular passive sentence we're going to put the
object of the verb first let's take a look I get my hair cut so if we look at my hair cut my hair
is the object it's the thing that receives the cut but we don't know who cuts my hair
or I probably know who it is but in this sentence I don't care it's not important I get my hair cut
someone else cuts it now here I am showing that I don't cut it myself if I cut my hair myself
then I say I cut my hair but here I get my hair cut it means that someone else does it for me
or I had my house painted last year I had my house painted did I paint the house myself?
no I didn't someone else did it for me my house here is the object of this verb painted someone
else did the painting and just like here this verb must be in the past participle okay let's
look at some examples so we use have and get to show services things that someone else does
for us so again someone else does the service it's a service that I request or I pay for
and we're not showing who does it we are just showing that the service is done for us for
example some Americans get their house cleaned this means that some Americans probably people who
have enough money they get their house cleaned we don't know or we don't care who does the cleaning
but in this case we are showing that these people do not do it themselves they hire or they
ask someone to do it for them this is a service that these people have now usually get and have
don't have any difference in meaning so we could also say some Americans have their house cleaned
second I have my groceries delivered sometimes do I deliver the groceries to myself? no
someone else delivers them it's a service that I pay for so groceries is actually the object of the
verb delivered and delivered is the verb in the past participle or I get my hair cut every two
months again I don't cut my hair myself someone cuts it for me it's a service that I pay for
and I could change this and say I have my hair cut but get in this situation would actually be
more common okay let's look at a few questions to see more examples Do you get your hair dyed?
this means does someone dye your hair for you? do you pay for that service?
Do you get your hair dyed? so you can answer either I dye my hair myself or yes I get my
hair dyed or you can even say no I don't get my hair dyed I still have my natural color
Do people in your culture have their houses cleaned?
so I can answer that in the United States some people have their houses cleaned
other people clean their houses themselves Do you have your medications delivered?
so in the place where I live if we want to we can ask the hospital to deliver the medications
and we can say that we have our medications delivered we're not stating who delivers it
we are just stating that it is a service that we ask for I have my medications delivered
or Do you get your car washed? this again means that it's a service that i pay someone to wash my
car i'm going to answer no no I don't get my car washed because I wash my car myself let's take a
look at some common mistakes with causative verbs one thing that is confusing for English learners
is the difference between passive causative and the present perfect because in some ways they do
look alike for example I have my hair cut every two months this is passive causative notice that
the main verb is the verb have and then we have the second verb which is the verb that
someone else does for us and the object the noun is always going to come in between those two verbs
on the other hand with present perfect I have cut my hair you're going to have the
helping verb have the main verb cut and then the object is going to come after the verbs
and there's a big difference in meaning in this one who cut my hair I did I have cut my hair like
I have just cut my hair in this one I have my hair cut who cut my hair somebody it wasn't me
so big difference in meaning there's also of course a difference in the
verb tense and the time but you want to be careful with the order because with passive causative
you're going to have the verb and then the object and then the verb that someone did
all right the second one would be confusing causative with the verb have to meaning must
for example I have my hair cut this is passive causative or I have to cut my hair this would
be a similar problem that in this one who does the cutting I do and in this one who does the cutting
someone else so again just notice the order that with passive causative you're going to
have the main verb have or get then you're going to have the object and then you're going to have
the verb that someone else does for you okay a few more quick details about passive causative
you want to notice that we use it with the verbs get and have and these basically have the same
meaning you'll notice that some verbs are more common in some situations like I get my hair cut
but I mean basically they have the same meaning the second thing you want to notice is that the
first verb have or get can change tenses just like any other verb if it's the main
verb in the sentence it can change tenses for example I had my house cleaned in the
past right yesterday I had my house cleaned or I'm going to get my teeth cleaned tomorrow
so this means that this is going to happen in the future this service will happen in the future
or I need to get my leg checked maybe my leg has some kind of problem and I need to have the doctor
check it i can say I need to get my leg checked in this case we're going to use the verb need first
and then we're going to use the passive causative to help you practice more I've provided a few
questions down below please answer them so you can practice the passive causative and I'll give you
feedback let me know if you have any questions and I hope to see you back here again soon take care!