in the lab to be examined

[navi tasan]

Thank you all so much,

I have to say that I am a little out of my depth here. I'd like to mention two things:

a) I do use onelook, and I did look up 'examine' in the AHD and there it says that it is transitive.

The American Heritage Dictionary entry: examine

The American Heritage Dictionary entry: examine

www.ahdictionary.com

But I guess the examples presented here do show that it could be used intransitively, albeit rarely.

b) What inspired my question was something I heard on TV, namely this sentence:
It is sitting on my desk to review.

I searched for it and couldn't find it in written form on the net. I'd have to go through youtube videos and listen and listen to find that sentence. I decided that I could make my own example sentences. They led to this interesting, enlightening and technical discussion.

After seeing the amount of effort that had gone into this thread, I decided to find the original sentence I had heard. I thought it might be interesting to present an example found 'in the wild'. I searched for it again in writing, to no avail, and then searched youtube. I got lucky.

Here goes:

Start at 1:44.

I think it has basically the same structure as my sentences. As far as the issue of the infinitive is concerned, I don't see a significant grammatical difference between:
It is sitting on my desk to review.
and
It is on my desk to review.

Then again, she might have misspoken or her usage might be regional or... So I am not sure this is significant.

 

[jutfrank]

Well done for finding a real sentence. However, you haven't quoted the sentence quite right. It goes like this:

It's sitting on my desk right now to review.

In my opinion, the right now part is crucial because it breaks up the structure in what could be an important way. Before I go on, listen to it a few times and tell me if you can hear the brief but crucial pause before to review that's puctuated with a head nod, which could be transcribed with a comma like this:

It's sitting on my desk right now, to review.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you very much, Jutfrank,

It is true that I left out the 'right now'. My apologies. I don't really know if that is significant or not, but it should have been included. I didn't pay any attention to it and basically forgot about it because in my mind it was not significant. It might well be.

You are correct that there is a pause there, but whether it corresponds to a comma or not is something I cannot say. She keeps moving her head, so I am not entirely convinced that the head nod means something, but it might.

I think that pause might make it plausible that that is a run-on sentence of sorts. If indeed there is a "comma-equivalent" pause there then I guess 'to review' was added as an afterthought. Maybe she slipped there and used 'to review' instead of 'to be reviewed'.

 

[jutfrank]

Yes, I think there may possibly be something like that going on. Perhaps not, but it's plausible. It's not just the head nod (head nods and other microexpressions always mean something) and the slight pause but also the placement of right now. I'd like to know why right now didn't come at the end of the utterance.

 

[Annabel Lee]

What inspired my question was something I heard on TV, namely this sentence:
It is sitting on my desk to review.

Interesting! This example with a pronoun subject causes me to reject my very tentative earlier hypothesis that we might be dealing with extraposed infinitival relative clauses here; for obviously "to review" cannot be said to modify "it," nor could we place "to review" right after "it": "It to review is sitting on my desk." So, that's one less wrong tree to bark up.

I see more clearly the type of case we are looking at now, even though I cannot explain why the direct object is deleted. I think the explanation might be rather complicated. But I don't think we need to worry about the placement of "right now" in the newscaster's sentence or the significance of her pause and nod. Take a look at these home-cooked examples:

The painting is on the wall for us to enjoy.
The therapy dog is in the nurse's office for stressed students to stroke.

Initially, I was just going to use the first example. "Enjoy" is almost always transitive; however, because we do sometimes just say "Enjoy!," which is arguably intransitive, I added the second example. The verb that I would naturally use is "pet," but an intransitive definition exists for it, and I wouldn't want that to cause another detour. The OED lists no intransitive uses for "stroke"; so if the second sentence above strikes folks here as natural enough, we have to deal with the fact that "stroke" has an implied direct object there, whether it is present at some level of syntax or is merely in our minds.

 

[jutfrank]

Right, but there's no 'for somebody' part in the structure we're discussing, right? If the original example were:

The animals are in the lab for the scientist to examine.

then I wouldn't have any problem with it whatsoever as it provides a clear subject for the infinitive. Furthermore, glossing an elipted 'for somebody' wouldn't work in the passive voice:

*The animals are in the lab for the scientist to be examined.

 

[Annabel Lee]

Right, but there's no 'for somebody' part in the structure we're discussing, right? If the original example were:

The animals are in the lab for the scientist to examine.

then I wouldn't have any problem with it whatsoever as it provides a clear subject for the infinitive.

I agree that that sentence is much easier to swallow when there is an overt subject of the infinitive, though it is still perplexing that the direct object of examine is not there despite being there in some sense -- unless one is in the intransitive camp. Semantically, I think it makes no sense whatsoever to say that "examine" is intransitive there.

I think that when there is no overt subject of the infinitive, as in Navi's original example, the sense is "for anyone":

The animals are in the lab to examine. = The animals are in the lab for anyone to examine / to be examined by anyone.
The painting is on the wall to enjoy. = The painting is on the wall for anyone to enjoy / to be enjoyed by anyone.
The therapy dog is in the nurse's office to stroke.
= The therapy dog is in the nurse's office for anyone to stroke / to be stroked by anyone.

Furthermore, glossing an elipted 'for somebody' wouldn't work in the passive voice:

*The animals are in the lab for the scientist to be examined.

Nice point. Interestingly, the sentence is also ungrammatical if "in order" is added, even without the passive, and even when there is an overt subject of the infinitive:

*The animals are in the lab in order to examine.
*The animals are in the lab in order for the scientist to examine.

Thus, mysteriously, "in order" prevents the direct object from going missing.

 

[jutfrank]

Semantically, I think it makes no sense whatsoever to say that "examine" is intransitive there.

The semantic role of 'the animals' is patient. In other words, they're the things that the examining is being performed upon. The semantic role of 'the scientist' is agent—the performer of the action. I don't know too much about grammar or whether I would consider a direct object to be 'there' in some sense, but semantically the patient is explicit.

I think that when there is no overt subject of the infinitive, as in Navi's original example, the sense is "for anyone":

The animals are in the lab to examine. = The animals are in the lab for anyone to examine / to be examined by anyone.

This is where we're parsing it differently I think because this doesn't sound purposive to me. The way I'm reading the original sentence is an answer to the question 'Why are the animals in the lab?' The way you've written these two sentences sounds to me like they're not doing that, and that they simply want to state where the animals are. Is that right? That's how I'm reading the Epstein sentence too—she's saying where the report is, not why it's there.

The painting is on the wall for anyone to enjoy / to be enjoyed by anyone.
The therapy dog is in the nurse's office for anyone to stroke / to be stroked by anyone.

Again, I read these sentences as about where, not why.

Nice point. Interestingly, the sentence is also ungrammatical if "in order" is added, even without the passive, and even when there is an overt subject of the infinitive:

*The animals are in the lab in order to examine.
*The animals are in the lab in order for the scientist to examine.

Yes. This has been precisely my problem since post #1 because I've been reading, or trying to read, the original sentence as essentially purposive. I think that when an infinitive is an infinitive of purpose, it must share the subject of the previous clause, which rules out that subject from being interpreted as the object.

I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum.

The pronoun 'I' is naturally and necessarily understood as the subject of both 'came' and the two infinitives.