Talk:False purpose

Simplistic take
While I agree in the main, I consider the article somewhat simplistic. Specifically, the "after" example ("Adam Varteressian doubled twice and knocked in four runs for Saratoga.") can be attacked for lacking a causal connection, and the use of "to" in the "before" example could be seen as an attempt to solve this issue. This would be highly understandable in light of incorrect sentences like "I will try and help you." (instead of "I will try to help you."), where a correct causality is often removed in everyday language. 88.77.180.196 (talk) 03:48, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

This is, sorry, a fundamentally bad article
I've never heard of this rule about 'false purpose', and more citations than some professor's pet peeve page are required to convince me it's actually a part of well-accepted formulations of Standard English. Moreover, the tone of the article treats correctness in Standard English as the only valid grammaticality judgement by calling constructions like "Adam doubled twice to knock in four runs for Saratoga" erroneous despite the obvious fact that speakers use this form intentionally on a regular basis.

I particularly don't trust this author as a source of useful information about Standard English usage because of their analysis of their final example, below:


 * "The Los Angeles City Council tentatively approved a plan today that would reshape council districts by carving up the district of a councilman who died last month to preserve the political careers of two incumbents. (The New York Times)"

This sentence contains an ambiguity about to which verb the phrase introduced by "to preserve" refers: are they carving up the district to preserve, or did the councilman die to preserve? However, it does not contain what this professor describes as 'false purpose'; when one associates the "to preserve" phrase with the correct verb, it becomes clear that this infinitival phrase is, in fact, being used to indicate a real purpose: the Los Angeles City Council really is carving up the district with the intent of preserving the political careers of two incumbents.

In summary, I'm not convinced this is actually an accepted rule of Standard English, and even if it were the article's tone betrays heavy bias against non-standard dialects and grammars.

('False purpose' is such a bad analysis of this form, anyway. Nevermind 'false', why 'purpose'? This entails a false assumption about the purpose of the speaker in using the form, namely, assuming the speaker is using "[verb phrase] [infinitival phrase]" to make a statement about purpose. As the sportswriting example pretty clearly shows, some constructions of that form are used to denote other relationships, such as "[event][result]".)

Stop making things up about English and/or Standard English grammar, and stop validating people who do by giving them Wikipedia pages.

P.S.: The original text of this article called the "to" in English infinitives a 'preposition', an idiocy I corrected. You're welcome. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.209.214.199 (talk) 15:05, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above analysis. I suggest taking down this article, and dealing with the issue instead in an article about uses of the English infinitive. Uses of English verb forms. Victor Yus (talk) 15:22, 12 March 2013 (UTC)