[Attempto] John uses X to insert Y

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

On 4 Feb 2012, at 24:19 , Gabriele Kahlout wrote:

> Am trying to express verbal sentences of the form "subject verb object verb object", such as in "John uses X to insert Y".
> How do I do that? 

Gabriele

ACE knows two uses of "to", one in prepositional phrases, the other – relevant to your question – in a special case of sentence subordination. ACE's "[noun phrase & transitive verb] to [verbal phrase]" construct as in "John wants to use an instrument." is an abbreviation for the more explicit sentence subordination "[noun phrase & transitive verb] that [sentence]" as in "John wants that he uses an instrument." where the subject of the superordinated and the subordinated sentence are identical. 

Thus your example sentence cannot be directly expressed in ACE. Here is an alternative that may, however, semantically not be identical.

John uses something X that inserts something Y.

Regards.

   --- nef