And is there anything else about 'to have happen'?

[Rachel]

During my first exposure to Clean Language via Ned Skelton’s three day training in May this year, I became fascinated by the apparently deliberate and specific use of syntax (grammar) to form clean questions. I needed to know how and why CL works – from a grammatical / language point of view, so started to ponder the ‘magic’ question:-
<And what would you like to have happen?>

I would like to find out how deliberate the choice of this construction was by David Grove or Penny & James, and what they know about how and why it works so well. In particular, the unusual (but perfectly understandable) phrase <to have happen>.

What follows is an extract from a longer think-piece in which I recorded the etymology of all the words in that sentence. (I have posted this document as an attachment, or I thought I had... Help! )


<to have + verb phrase> (my definition) means to cause or allow (someone to do something). Examples could be: ‘I’ll have Jim do the dishes and Jack the drying up’ or ‘I’ll have Jenny act the part of Dido tonight.’ ‘Who would you like to have come to your party?’


For me, this construction implies the feeling of being like a film/ theatre director or generally someone in charge who is co-ordinating and orchestrating things. Does this construction exist in other languages?

<to happen> means to turn out, to come to pass, to take place, to occur, to chance, to transpire, befall, develop. From Old Norse <happ> meaning chance, good luck. In Middle English as <hap> - a verb meaning to take place by chance. Also a noun meaning fortune, chance occurrence, an unexpected random event, the quality shared by unintended or unpredictable events. Also this quality was regarded as the cause of such events.

These historical forms gave rise to the modern English word <happy> and negative connotations such as <hapless, mishap>.

<Happ> is thought to come originally from an Indo European root <kob> meaning to suit, fit, succeed. Also Proto Germanic <khapan> which gave rise to OE <gehaep> meaning: convenient, fit.

The modern meaning of the verb ‘to happen’: As an intransitive verb*, it is used today in eg ‘I happen to be in town today so I can meet you for lunch’ or ‘I happen to have a pen in my bag’ – expressing some kind of luck or unexpectedness (usually leading to a good outcome?).

It is used with a sense of passivity – ‘it just happened that way’. You can’t ‘happen something’ (because it’s intransitive*) – something happens to you.

* an intransitive verb is one that does not take an object. For example,
Betty hit Bill. Betty = subject, hit = verb, Bill = object.
I fainted, it happened, she laughed are all examples of verbs that can’t take (direct) objects – eg I fainted Bill, she laughed him etc.

<to have happen> no one is doing the happening/action. To me, this somewhat unusual, and not commonly used, phrase implies a dissociation from the future proceedings, as if watching it on a movie which I am directing myself (see above: to have + verb phrase). This phrase increases the sense of being in control of future events in my life, but it is tempered with the words <would like> – implying what do I wish or fancy? - and <happen> which has been established above as meaning things that take place by chance, turn out – and particularly that ‘happen’ cannot be ‘done’ by a person/human agency.

The magic bit… I think there is a kind of creative/magical tension in these words between me as the architect, designer and director of my own future (‘having’ or causing things) and me as the recipient of <happ> - chance or good luck, something not caused by human agency. It feels like some ‘other’ (non-human agency) is laying things on for me, but in accordance with what I’d like, or what I fancy.


~~~


What do you think is in the deep structure / meaning of that phrase?

Apologies to all those who have done more than 3 days CL training and know perfectly well why AWWYLTHH is optimally clean without needing to analyse the grammar!

Any linguisticians out there interested in producing a generative grammar for Clean Language? Is it possible or necessary? Or is it all done by intuition and therefore impossible to turn into a set of grammatical rules, so that beginners (like me) can generate the optimum CLQs? Or new CLQs?

Rachel Herefordshire, UK
July 2007

[BobGorman]

Rachel,
in response to your comment:
"During my first exposure to Clean Language via Ned Skelton’s three day training in May this year, I became fascinated by the apparently deliberate and specific use of syntax (grammar) to form clean questions. I needed to know how and why CL works – from a grammatical / language point of view, so started to ponder the ‘magic’ question:-
<And what would you like to have happen?>

I would like to find out how deliberate the choice of this construction was by David Grove or Penny & James, and what they know about how and why it works so well. In particular, the unusual (but perfectly understandable) phrase <to have happen>."
This is my opinion only; your mileage may differ...
During the 2 week training I had with Penny & James, I also was curious about the precision of their wording in the questions, and the syntax for the questions. Your question AWWYLTHH, lifted a great personal weight from my shoulders. Before hearing this question, and having Penny explain the logic behind it, (this might have been over coffee, not in a formal session), I had a piece of baggage in my personal backpack, that held me back from my dreams in many ways. I felt that if anything good was to happen, I had to MAKE it happen. So limiting. The idea that good things could just happen, without my intervention was, for me personally, freeing. That night, and over the next few days, I realized many things that I would 'like to have happen' even if I had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Wow.

Another aspect of precise wording, came from a struggle I had adapting to the new questions. The question: "Is there anything else about [x]?", I subconsciously translated into "What else is there about [x]?" During the many practice sessions, Penny constantly caught me on it, but it took almost a week, before I naturally formed the better question. My explanation: derived from Penny's, to the question "Is there anything else about [x]?", the client might legitimately answer: "No." But to my question: "What else is there about [x]?", the client faced a facilitator-induced problem - I don't know of anything else, but since the facilitator asked what else there is, there must be something else, and I must be deficient in some way for not knowing what it is! Not good! Major intrusion of the facilitator into the clients world space.

A further thought on the role of syntax.
Everything we say, or write, has both a meaning and a syntax, a What and a How. We cannot express a meaning in words without at the same time using some syntax for our words. That syntax is designed to help convey our meaning - what we want to convey - but sometimes hinders the clarity of our meaning. Even the simplest sentence, "Hello." conveys a meaning of "Hi, I'm willing to get to know you", or "Welcome", or others... But it could also be expressed in other syntaxes, "Hi, how are you?", "What can I do for you?", "I'm glad to hear your voice.". Likewise, it could have a very different meaning, when getting a call from a stranger, - I'm being very cautious, Who are you?, What do you want to sell me?, who do you want me to vote for etc.

So while syntax may be helpful in revealing, it can also be used to obscure meaning, just listen to politicians and the media.

Meaning is what we want to transmit and receive, and occasionally hide.

Bob