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Suppose a family father tends to punish one of that family kids and says to the family members let's go out and have dinner and he / she should stay at home alone as their punishment. Mother talks to him and finally father forgives the kid in our question. But my question is that in the following sentence which is probable to be said, using the preposition 'for' is redundant or obligatory:

  • Eventually he agreed for him to join them.
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  • I agree with the answers that people have posted. It would sound more fluent and idiomatic to use a construction like "He agreed that the kid could join them" or "He agreed to the kid's joining them for dinner."
    – stangdon
    Jul 26, 2016 at 14:23
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    Yes, it is obligatory. But "for" is not a preposition here; it's a clause subordinator, a special marker for VPs of to-infinitival clauses that have a subject. In your example "him" is the subject of the infinitival clause "for him to join them".
    – BillJ
    Jul 26, 2016 at 15:27

3 Answers 3

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If you leave out for, it looks/sounds like him is trying to be a direct object of agree. To agree doesn't take an object, so it will sound wrong or like you are trying to say something else.

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The verb "to agree" collocates with the following prepositions.

About (something):

We already agreed about everything, didn't we?

On/upon (something/doing something):

Let's agree on this, shall we?

With (someone [+"that" clause]):

I can't but agree with you.

Don't you agree with me that the plan was really good?

To (in the sense "to decide, to say yes"):

Unwillingly, he agreed to our proposal.

As for the example sentence, I don't think it would be incorrect to put in this way:

Eventually, he (Mike's dad) agreed to his (Mike's) joining them (Mike's companions).

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I would agree with LawrenceC. I think you probably intend to mean "His father agreed (with his mother) for him to join them". But it sounds clunky and just plain wrong. Nobody would ever say that in real life.

If you did a Google Books search for "agree with her for him to", it would return a total of zero hits for you; the same for "agree with him/them/her for her/them/him to" in any combination.

However, you could say "he arranged for him to join them", though that's not what you intend to mean.

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