He was very "troubled" to see ...

[sitifan]

He was very troubled to see that the park was very dirty. There was trash everywhere. (My bold.)
Source: Taiwan Junior High School English, Book 5, Lesson 9.

Is the sentence in bold acceptable to native speakers?

 

[emsr2d2]

Yes.

 

[5jj]

What makes you think it might not be?

 

[sitifan]

What makes you think it might not be?

Mr. Yen Sihua, a famous Taiwanese teacher of English, thinks that the sentences below are incorrect.
He was very troubled to see that the park was very dirty.
As soon as she got in, she was troubled to hear the lod radio.

Mr. Yen says that the sentence pattern "someone is troubled to do something" is wrong.

 

[emsr2d2]

Mr. Yen Sihua, a famous Taiwanes teacher of English, thinks that the sentences below are incorrect.
He was very troubled to see that the park was very dirty.
As soon as she got in, she was troubled to hear the lod radio.

Mr. Yen says that the sentence pattern "someone is troubled to do something" is wrong.

With certain verbs, I'd agree with him. However, with some verbs it's fine. In the two examples above, the person isn't actively doing something. They're experiencing something. It wouldn't work in something like "He was very troubled to play the guitar" or "He was very troubled to go to work".

 

[jutfrank]

The verb 'troubled' expresses a psychological effect so only a small group of other verbs can fit in the to-infinitive complement position. I think these licensed verbs are limited to those that express some kind of 'mental discovery', such as the perception verbs see/hear, etc. and also verbs like discover/find out/find/learn, etc. These verbs must express the cause of the psychological effect, of course.