[Corpora-List] V Object into V-ing

Wed Nov 20 16:49:11 UTC 2013

Hunston and Francis do give a nice list of "causative into" verbs, but Rudanko (in his various articles -- all of them very nice) shows that they have barely scratched the surface in terms of the verbs that occur with the construction. And as I've mentioned, in my two recent papers I bump this up from the 100 or so in Rudanko to about 800 or so matrix verbs.

Some of these are really interesting, (see those below -- all from COCA, COHA, TIME, or GloWbE). Bottom line is that a Construction Grammar account is what perhaps best explains the possibility of using all of these verbs with the construction, and allows us to go far beyond the traditional Hunston/Francis/Cobuild list, which has been around for 15-20 years now.

TIME:

1920s	heffle	Last week Senator Heflin tried, at length, to heffle the Senate into adopting a resolution condemning the nameless bottle-thrower (note the play on the senator's name)
	hornswoggle	Hilda invited to Rackham, with the idea of hornswoggling them into buying the place, gouty Lord Mere de Beaurivage.
1930s	egg	its Soviet and Chinese members tried to egg the League into cracking down as hard as possible on Tokyo.
	sting	This was supposed to have stung Dictator Stalin into assuming a defiant attitude.
	catspaw	Then his boss catspawed him into marrying a European mistress who was getting troublesome.
1940s	preach	a week's visit to the Chemurgic Institute, which he preached mid-Trinity farmers into founding at Romayor
	pound	with a completely wrong belief that you can pound your neighbors into loving you as an Apache pounds his woman into dazed rapture
	smooch	they had encouraged his wife to smooch the customers into buying more drinks
1950s	cramp	enabling Rattigan to dramatize incidents that the stage cramped him into reporting at secondhand
	dope	pearl fishermen made plans to dope stubborn oysters into yielding up their precious pearls
	jar	I want to jar the observer into thinking, to make him uncomfortable.
1960s	jolly	all trying to jolly the reader into putting up once more with that old boudoir Bolshevik
	gig	He can and has gigged the Administration into paying closer heed to the Vietnamese refugee problem
	stiffen	We hope this will stiffen them into resisting the automobile, and preserving the amenities
1970s	drill	and to drill the people into becoming active participants in public health campaigns
	hook	The building tension undoubtedly hooked first-night viewers into sticking with the series
	Svengali	he Svengalied willing authors into writing potboilers and racy romans clef
1980s	blarney	Moynihan, who . blarneyed Nixon into endorsing the idea [note: Moynihan was Irish]
	blow	a providential "wayward wind" will blow him into drawing fewer minority conclusions
1990s	euchre	trying to portray the Democrats as the high-tax party, by euchring them into proposing an increase
	sober	such a frightening specter will sober both countries into backing off their nuclear one-upmanship

GloWbE-US:

	a.	how did you all even managed (sic) to carve yourselves into thinking that it's a right thing to do?
	b.	No, it is easier to complain your way into getting what you want
	c.	and maybe I can deflect them into being impressed with that
	d.	I think Burger King is trying to depress me into getting fat
	e.	and the people of Bethlehem saw a good match for Ruth and edged her into meeting Boaz
	f.	Scott is after a royal title and has Googled his way into getting one
	g.	I've been lumbered into enjoying this!
	h.	but rather my perspective slanted me into believing that one
	i.	Of course Verizon is trying to squirrel me into upgrading

GloWbE-UK:

	a.	And well done Auntie to blag your way into getting some funding from overseas
	b.	to cloud and deceive us into believing that all hope is lost
	c.	He'd been cuddled into doing some work experience by a social worker
	d.	Microsoft is forced to hack Windows into behaving more like a multi-user system
	e.	a hero that the world has been magicked into forgetting
	f.	When science is muddied into being seen as an act of writing
	g.	He was told that this blood had been randomised into having a HIV test
	h.	he teaches some tips for styling fine hair into looking like it has some major volume
	i.	how far Labour has tugged the Tories into engaging with the details

(indirect causation)

It (X) has helped to build America (Y) into exploring new frontiers (Z) (COCA SPOK 1994)
My gators start, like seeds, small, but you  (X) feed them (Y) into becoming attractions (Z) (COCA FIC 2004)
I guess I (X) finally molded him (Y) into taking responsibility for his life (Z) (COCA MAG 1994)
but [he] (X) coached him (Y) into reenacting activities for the camera (Z) (COCA NEWS 2003)
I feel like I was nurtured into wanting to be somebody special (COCA MAG 1998)
Fran also organized Kathy into buying some smart cotton dresses (COCA FIC 1997)
when his wife (X) educates him (Y) into believing that her staying home is a feminist statement (COCA MAG 1998)
We're trying to integrate this person into being a law-abiding citizen again (COCA NEWS 2009)

============================================
Mark Davies
Professor of Linguistics / Brigham Young University
http://davies-linguistics.byu.edu/
** Corpus design and use // Linguistic databases **
** Historical linguistics // Language variation **
** English, Spanish, and Portuguese **
============================================

From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf Of Oakey, David [ENGL]
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 7:43 AM
To: Jason Eisner; Adam Kilgarriff
Cc: corpora
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] V Object into V-ing

Hello Jason and Adam,

A list from a pedagogical perspective is in COBUILD Grammar Patterns 1. The  [V Object into V-ing] construction maps onto the grammar pattern V n into -ing:

https://arts-ccr-002.bham.ac.uk/ccr/patgram/ch04.html#s17 

This page gives lists of verbs which fit this pattern - they are grouped into four principal senses: FORCE (e.g. force, bully, frighten), TRICK (trick, entrap, mislead), CHARM (charm, cajole, flatter) and SPUR  (spur, nudge, galvanize). The Objects are all human, and the Adjunct needs to be a prepositional phrase consisting of into and a non-finite -ing clause, and, as Jason points out, not all -ing forms following into begin non-finite clauses, e.g.  

1) his union plans to pursue similar lawsuits to force manufacturers into producing safer needles

2) Conservatives are eager to force liberals into embarrassing votes

Example 1 is an instance of the construction/pattern, while 2 isn't.

Even when put appears to be used in this construction/pattern, as in 3 where into introduces a non-finite -ing clause, the Object isn't human, so put doesn't take on any of the force, trick, charm or spur meanings:

3) When you put money into renovating your home

I couldn't find drop in COCA with a human Object followed by into introducing a non-finite -ing clause.

Best wishes,

David

From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf Of Jason Eisner
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 6:58 AM
To: Adam Kilgarriff
Cc: corpora
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] V Object into V-ing

Nice list, Adam.  I notice that most of these verbs involve inducement to behave in a particular way, whether by trickery, force, or persuasion.  

This doesn't seem to correspond to any of Levin's classes, but some of her other classes such as 02.13.4 overlap with it, and those classes even provide some new candidates.  E.g., looking at 02.13.4, I think I could easily use soothe, surprise, startle, provoke, enrage ... in this construction (and a quick web search seems to bear me out).

Most of the other verbs on your list seem to involve physical transfer (put, bring, throw, drop, plunge, pour, ...).  But I suspect that those are not actually instances of the construction in question, but rather come from spurious examples like "drop it into boiling [water]," where "into" is a spatial preposition and "boiling" is an adjectival participle.  A few of the verbs could plausibly be used in both constructions, such as "guide."  
It's tempting to use a parsed corpus such as Annotated Gigaword to distinguish the two constructions.  However, it's probably safer just to filter out cases where the -ing word is followed by a noun.  These cases could either be omitted from your analysis or analyzed by hand, but they are likely to confuse an automatic parser.  Indeed, without context, "coax him into boiling water" is ambiguous even to a human.  
(Warning: "Followed by a noun" is not a perfect pattern, e.g., it won't catch "drop it into boiling and sulfurous water."  You could play with the pattern: the question is whether "boiling" could plausibly be the first word of an NP rather than a VP.  I haven't looked at the data myself.  Clever use of a probabilistic parser could identify cases that unambiguously use one or the other construction, versus doubtful cases, but unfortunately, pre-parsed corpora generally only offer a single parse per sentence.)
-cheers, jason

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 6:48 AM, Adam Kilgarriff <adam at lexmasterclass.com> wrote:
Chris,

Not sure about academic papers, but here are the verbs that do it most in the 113,436 hits for the pattern in enTenTen12

Adam

4146 trick
3521 talk
2784 fool
1355 put
1154 delude
944 mislead
907 scare
861 deceive
577 bring
400 force
387 pressure
300 lure
268 manipulate
248 push
248 convert
213 turn
190 lead
189 brainwash
170 con
167 get
134 dupe
101 confuse
100 entice
99 guide
98 call
90 coerce
84 do
80 go
69 seduce
67 integrate
60 speak
60 lull
56 tempt
49 throw
47 provide
46 coax
41 kid
41 intimidate
38 invest
37 cross
34 drop
33 rush
29 stimulate
26 persuade
25 frighten
23 take
22 plunge
22 incorporate
19 make
19 lock
19 convince
18 pour
18 hoodwink
18 badger
17 shame
17 motivate
15 tease
15 regard
15 breathe
13 draw
12 dream
11 move
10 sucker
10 panic
10 harass

On 20 November 2013 10:42, Christoph Ruehlemann <chrisruehlemann at googlemail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
I'm interested in the [V Object into V-ing] construction, as in *You bullied me into becoming yur girlfriend* (BNC: HGM 3178). Is anybody aware of ongoing research or published papers into this? (I faintly remember seeing a paper read at one of the ICAME conferences, but cannot remember which one.)
Cheers
Chris

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