On a Class of Resultatives in Recent English

Abstract

Consider sentence (1):

• (1) I had pestered my father …into letting me create a small conifer and heather garden … (British Books, Bank of English)

In (1), the matrix verb is pester, and it selects three arguments. The first is the subject of the matrix clause, the NP I, the second the direct object, the NP my father, and the third the prepositional complement into letting me create a small conifer and heather garden. The pattern of (1) is here called the transitive into -ing pattern.