Hi Rolf,What you state is accurate for American English as well.
Let me say again: "have" in the example you cite is commonly used
throughout Australia to mean "to eat" and not "to be in a state of
eating". My intuition here is that it might even NEVER occur with the
meaning you assign. The "linguistic analysis" here you present is just
plain wrong as you force a meaning to my words which I just do not mean.
A true linguistic representation of the sentence you cite with the
assigned meaning should actually be given a # in the front or something
to show that this meaning is absurd to native speakers.
"Had" can also be used in the same manner: "We had dinner at Maxim's".
This equates to "We ate dinner at Maxim's".
To repeat: Despite your linguistic intuitions here, they are in conflict
with how the phrase would be understood by English speakers in
Australia, perhaps elsewhere too I would say.
In this case you really should withdraw your statements and admit youIn this case, I'm thankful that English is my mother tongue. Even a
were wrong.
Regards,
David Kummerow.
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