Tener as an auxilliary verb

Question

I was working through a grammar book the other day and came across a couple of examples of tener being used as an auxilliary verb where i would have been inclined to use haber.

Eg - Tienen pensado ir a Toledo. Tengo oídos todas las sinfonías de Beethoven. etc

I have come across this before but haven't really got a proper answer to whether there is a difference between using 'haber' and 'tener' in such examples and how common it is to use 'tener' as an auxilliary verb (other than tener+que, that is).

Any thoughts would be welcomed

Pensado, not pensando. It uses the past participle. - lazarus1907, May 3, 2011

oops typo, gracias - Kiwi-Girl, May 3, 2011

Answer 1

This construction requires a transitive verb indeed. It is very similar to the perfect construction (haber + past participle), but it focuses on the result of something that has been done or decided. Thus, in "Te tengo dicho que no vengas tarde", the warning has been clearly issued before (we assume that many times), and yet, he is late again, so we are going to have to deal with this situation. This construction is commonly used with verbs like leer, ver, entender, pedir...

gracias como siempre :) - Kiwi-Girl, May 3, 2011

so for that 'tengo oídos ....' sentence would you use tener instead of haber there say if someone was inviting you to go to a Beethoven concert but you wanted them to know that you were over them having heard them all? Rather than using haber as a way to - Kiwi-Girl, May 3, 2011

just inform someone casually in coversation that you'd heard all the Beethoven symphonies. - Kiwi-Girl, May 3, 2011

Answer 2

tener (as auxiliary verb)+past participle (skip the first few answers)

Answer 3

You can say Tienen pensado ir a Toledo o Han pensado ir a Toledo. But the second sentence it's incorrect. The right way is He oido todas las sinfonías de Beethoven. Actually, you can use them together, like He tenido qur hacerlo yo misma. That means I've done it myself.

Thank you for your comments Coquito but I'm not sure that I agree with the second sentence being incorrect. For two reasons, 1 - I didn't make it up lol it was in a grammar book and secondly it has an object so according to the link QF put it should be - Kiwi-Girl, May 3, 2011

fine. Although I'm thinking it probably isn't used much if ever in speech?? - Kiwi-Girl, May 3, 2011

The second one is perfect. - lazarus1907, May 3, 2011

Answer 4

Please correct me if I've got any of this wrong but from Quentin's link I took that 'tener' + a participle carries a little more emphasis or a sense of repetition which was quite interesting.

EG: «¡Le tengo dicho [= le he dicho muchas veces]

Different to haber when 'tener' is used the participle doesn't stay in its masculine singular form and it needs to agree in gender and number with the direct object. Also 'tener' can't be used with intransitive verbs, ie verbs that don't take an object.