This pattern has three structures:

• Structure I: Verb with Object
  I remember you saying that.
• Structure II: Verb with two Objects
  They caught him stealing.
• Structure III: Verb with Object and Adjunct
  I spend the time reading.

Verbs with this structure belong to the following meaning groups:

These verbs are concerned with feeling or thinking. This includes:

• emotional attitudes e.g. dread, hate, like
• thought processes e.g. contemplate, remember
• imagining or envisaging e.g. picture, visualize
• tolerating e.g. (cannot) bear, tolerate

• We know how irritating an incorrectly addressed envelope can be, so we would appreciate you letting us know if we have got it wrong.
• One hears and sees programmes about cruelty in old people's homes, but you don't envisage it happening in your own family.
• `Even though I understand the need for unions, because workers need a spokesperson, I fear them getting more power,' she said.
• Opal, his sixty-four-year-old wife, didn't really like him drinking so much.
• Then he said, `I hope you don't mind me calling in like this, without an appointment.'
• When I was in my twenties and living a rather hippy existence, she put up with me drifting in and out of her life.
• Nobody can ever recall him firing anybody.

These verbs are concerned with speaking or writing about actions or events.

• Parents of children who abuse volatile substances have described them buying five or six cans of butane at a time.
• Do the neighbours report anyone else going in or out?

These verbs are concerned with a logical relation between the process or thing indicated by the Subject of the verb and the process indicated by the noun group and the `-ing' clause.

• My job entails me driving several thousand miles around the country each month in all traffic conditions.
• A move there would involve him taking a cut in salary.
• We get another customer for our hospital, and this justifies us spending money on new equipment.

These verbs are concerned with stopping someone doing something, or preventing something happening.

• What they want above all is to avoid it degenerating into a full-scale military conflict.
• They signed an agreement with the National Trust which precluded the land being used for a bridge.
• The Betting, Gambling and Lotteries Act of 1963 prohibits any cash bet being struck on a Sunday.
• I think she really would have liked to stop us seeing each other.

These verbs are concerned with someone risking something happening.

• Glover could not risk four men standing up in court and telling the judge he had ordered them to kill someone.

a) The noun group and the `-ing' clause together form the Object; they cannot be separated from each other. In the first example in the table above, what my husband hates is me being a businesswoman; he does not hate me. With this structure you can ask the question What does he hate?, which makes it clear that me being a businesswoman is a single grammatical unit.

b) This structure has no passive.

c) There is only one phrasal verb with this structure, put up with, which has two particles. The pattern is V P P n -ing.

Verbs with this structure belong to the following meaning groups:

These verbs are concerned with perceiving, finding, or showing someone doing something.

• As she left, she could feel his eyes following her.
• Men had been observed entering and leaving the house with large bags, the police were told.

• The next day saw us cruising down endless, cactus-lined straights with vultures circling overhead.

• I caught myself wondering why we ever imagine children will bring us happiness.

These verbs are concerned with causing someone to do something or causing something to happen. We include here verbs which are concerned with keeping or leaving someone or something in a particular state.

• Widow Edna Lawrence survived a gas blast which brought her home crashing down on top of her.
• The show generated an electric atmosphere that lit up the audience and had them cheering till they were hoarse.
• Difficulties of fuel, transport, labour and storage has meant that the grain is left rotting in the fields.
• The explosion sent shrapnel flying through the sides of the car on to the crowded highway.

a) Both the noun group and the `-ing' clause are Objects.

b) This structure has a passive, with the pattern be V-ed -ing. The `-ing' clause is the Object. The fact that you can say A man was noticed sitting alone on the grass shows that a man and sitting alone on the grass are two grammatical units. However, the verb have (group II.2 above) does not have a passive in this pattern, and watch is very infrequently passive.

Verbs with this structure are all concerned with passing time in a particular way, or starting or ending a period of time in a particular way. The verbs spend and waste are also concerned with ways of spending or wasting money.

• Liberal Democrats started this day making their objections to the Republican plan clear.

• He busied himself rinsing the washcloth, soaping it again.

a) The noun group is the Object, and the `-ing' clause is an Adjunct.

b) Some of the verbs with this structure have a passive, with the pattern be V-ed -ing. The `-ing' clause is an Adjunct. The verbs that are used in the passive are pass, spend, and waste.

This pattern has two structures:

• Structure I: Verb with Object
  I need you to be there.
• Structure II: Verb with two Objects
  She persuaded him to leave.

Verbs with this structure are all concerned with the way someone feels about a situation, action, or event, or with what someone wants or wishes to happen.

• Treating others as you would like them to treat you is easier said than done.
• I'd love her to go into politics or on the stage.
• I need you to do something for me.

• Clenching her fists, she willed herself not to cry.

a) The noun group and the to-infinitive clause together form the Object: they cannot be separated from each other. In the first example in the table above, what the English husband hates is for his wife to stand out in a crowd; he does not hate his wife. With this structure you can ask the question What does he hate?, which makes it clear that his wife to stand out in a crowd is a single grammatical unit.

b) This structure has no passive.

Verbs with this structure belong to the following meaning groups:

These verbs are concerned with communicating something to someone. This includes:

• asking, advising, or telling someone to do something e.g. beg, order
• communicating by gesture e.g. beckon, motion
• challenging someone to do something e.g. dare, defy
• forbidding someone to do something

• She looked at him, waiting for him to ask her to come with him.
• A retired taxi driver who has a chronic chest disorder challenged a tobacco company yesterday to admit the link between smoking and ill-health.
• My advisers counselled me to do nothing.
• I was walking down the hall, looking into rooms, and this gray-haired guy motioned me to come into his room.
• I make no claim to being an expert with this machine and I recommend all readers to follow the manufacturer's instructions.
• They are expected to be summoned to appear in court next month for a variety of offences.
• The first Yankee soldier to ride up threw him his reins and told him to hold the horse.

These verbs are concerned with trying to make someone do something, usually by talking to them. This includes more pleasant ways of persuasion, such as cajole and coax, as well as more unpleasant ways, such as badger and pester.

• He kept badgering me to go out with him, so in the end I agreed.
• Lots of countries try to coax people to return bottles by insisting on a refundable deposit.
• Over the last three or four years, they have egged each other on to agree a whole series of initiatives to tighten up immigration and asylum laws.
• I nagged my father to tell me a war story, preferably one with blood and courage and drama and medals.
• My education was the most important thing to my mother, and she pestered my father to pay for me to go to the best schools.

These verbs are concerned with making or causing someone do something. This includes:

• forcing someone to do something e.g. blackmail, coerce
• condemning someone to do something e.g. condemn, sentence
• tempting someone to do something e.g. entice, tempt
• persuading someone to do something e.g. convince, persuade
• causing someone to do something or something to happen e.g. cause, lead

The difference between this meaning group and meaning group II.2 above is that here the action does not necessarily involve talking, and the implication is that the person concerned actually does the action indicated by the to-infinitive clause. In this meaning group, the Subject is often inanimate.

The verb make occurs in this pattern only in the passive: the corresponding active pattern is V n inf (see page xxx). Ch3 Sec5

• It's much easier to bribe the children to mow the lawn than to get down on their hands and knees pulling weeds out.
• The force of her shove caused me to crack my head against someone else's.
• There are no vested interests that would compel us to conceal the truth.
• Far too many handicapped young people have been condemned to operate at a lower level of education and achievement than their abilities warrant
• It was September 1982 when his love for books drove him to open his own shop.
• Kim's gnawing conscience and guilt led her to overeat.
• I did nothing wrong, yet I'm being made to suffer like this.
• She and Kath were roped in to talk to students in Blackpool about the strike.

• Even now she couldn't bring herself to tell John the whole truth.

• She used to be so shy, she says, she had to steel herself to walk into a launderette.

These verbs are concerned with allowing, enabling, helping, or qualifying someone to do something.

• Julia was assisting him to prepare his speech.
• He will have a fitness test on his groin injury this morning, but is unlikely to be cleared to play.
• You helped me to hold on and to continue to mother my own children at times when I didn't think I could even go on trying.
• Off the east entrance we obediently awaited the signal permitting us to enter.
• The basic course does not qualify you to practise as a therapist, but it does give you an adequate foundation.

• I do not permit myself to be influenced away from what I think is the right thing to do.

These verbs are concerned with teaching someone to do something, or with programming or preparing someone or something to do a particular task.

• Modern roses are bred to flower more or less continuously throughout the summer season.
• There are professional courses which will prepare students to teach in secondary schools from 11 to 16.
• A computer can be programmed to keep a record of all its internal states and then to trace back through these.
• She describes her as a `wonderful, wise, loving woman who taught me to accept myself as a human being'.

These verbs are concerned with motivating or inspiring someone to do something.

• He says the banning of his English play decided him to write something about censorship.
• Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian philosophy inspired his followers to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number through more efficient government.

These verbs are concerned with appointing or choosing someone to do something, or with allocating or assigning something to a particular use.

• Belgium chose her to represent the country again the following year and she became a star there.
• One usher should be delegated to pay special attention to the bride's mother and the groom's parents, and to escort them to their seats.
• Reliable sources in Algeria say new men have been nominated to head the country's three largest banks.
• Trish picked up a fallen branch and used it to lift the brambles and probe the area beneath.

• President Clinton has allocated $16 million to expand an innovative lending program in the nation's poor communities.

These verbs are concerned with thinking, saying, or showing something. Some of these verbs, such as prove and show, sometimes have inanimate Subjects. The verb that most frequently occurs in the to-infinitive clause is be.

The verb see, which occurs in this pattern only in the passive, has a corresponding active pattern, V n inf (see page xxx). Ch3 Sec5 The other verbs which are passive with this meaning do not have this other pattern.

• The French government is believed to be planning to send transport helicopters to work alongside the Germans.
• The Guardian concentrates on the likelihood that NATO leaders will declare nuclear weapons to be `weapons of last resort'.
• If Rickmore's as intelligent as I judge him to be, by now he'll have had to realize where our questions were leading.
• He distrusted human reason, knew it to be fallible.
• The buyer was presumed to be Japanese because telephone bids were negotiated by a Japanese member of staff.

• She left the course by ambulance and was thought to have suffered a neck injury.

• Yeltsin has above all in the last few days proved himself to be a highly skilled politician.

These verbs are concerned with intentions, predictions, and expectations.

• He had pinned his hopes on his friend and even after three days he expected him to turn up at any minute.
• The bookies are fancying Brown Windsor to take first prize, while the diehard romantics favour former winner, West Tip.
• He had been scheduled to return to Washington, but now he clearly hoped to stay on.
• He trusted her to tell the truth because he knew that she always told the truth.

• Gathering fungi is a mystery to most Britons. Few trust themselves to recognise what is safe, and they may be wise to err on the side of caution.

These verbs are concerned with someone being heard or seen to do something. These verbs occur in this pattern only in the passive: the corresponding active pattern is V n inf (see page xxx). Ch3 Sec5

• New mothers have been observed to touch the feet and hands first, then the body, and then the baby's face.

There are a number of other verbs which have this structure.

• Mrs Mills said yesterday she was honoured to have been appointed.

• `We've got some leads,' Douglas said, not troubling himself to conceal the lie.

• We 've done a lot to improve results, and a lot more will be done.
• The treatment takes up to twelve months to produce worthwhile improvement.

a) Both the noun group and the to-infinitive clause are Objects.

b) This structure has a passive, with the pattern be V-ed to-inf. The to-infinitive clause is the Object. The fact that you can say I was nagged to cut my hair shows that me and to cut my hair are two grammatical units.

c) Phrasal verb patterns are the same, except that there is also a particle, P. The first Object comes either between the verb and the particle, or after the particle. When this Object comes after the particle, it cannot be a personal pronoun. You say
The court can bind them over to control the offender
or The court can bind over parents to control the offender
but you do not say The court can bind over them to control the offender.