dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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 Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 10:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| 1. She found the box to contain nothing. |
1. Correct. She discovered that there was nothing in it.
| Quote: |
| 2. She found the box contain nothing. |
2. Incorrect. At the very least, you'd have to say something like She found (that) the box contains (or contained) nothing, or She found (that) the boxes contain nothing. And to save you the trouble of asking, the sentence She found the box containing nothing means there were several boxes, all of which contained something except one--and that's the box she found.
| Quote: |
| 3. They found the business to pay. |
3. Correct, but I can only speculate at the context. About the only way this makes sense is to interpret it as something like They found that the business was a profitable one, or maybe They found the business to be profitable. If that's your meaning, fine.
| Quote: |
| 4. They found the business pay. |
4. Huh? You say you found this in a dictionary? Well, it would take a real stretch of the imagination to dream up context in which this could be acceptable. The only possible way I can think of for this to be "correct" is if you mean They found the money that a business was intending to use to pay their employees. In other words, They found the payroll . . . and even that's a stretch.
Hope this helps.
Greg
P.S. Even dictionaries can make mistakes; but just out of morbid curiosity, what dictionary did you find #4 in? |
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