Progressive 'have'

Consider these two sentences, please:

• We had a strange woman come to the door selling pictures.

• We had a man singing to us as we sat in the restaurant having our meal.

Can I use the progressive form of the verb 'have' in the above two examples. For instance,

• We were having a strange woman come to the door selling pictures.

• We were having a man singing to us as we sat in the restaurant having our meal.

And what does the verb 'have' mean in those examples?

Solution 1:

This is an "affective" construction. The subject of "have" is affected somehow by the event or condition described in the rest of the sentence. It is similar (I am told) to the Japanese adversative passive construction, except in English the affect isn't necessarily bad.

The subject is typically the same as some possessive in the body of the sentence, sometimes implicitly. "I have a hole in the pocket" means "I have a hole in my pocket". Or at least, the subject has to be connected somehow to the event or condition described after "have".

There can be ambiguity with the "have" of causatives. You could say "I had a hole in the pocket" meaning that I caused there to be a hole in the pocket (as I was trying to fix the trousers, say).