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Samuere Posted 10 years ago
Grammar

The Usage of 'to'

All of this resonates across American culture to find a literary echo in William Faulkner's famous assertion that ~.

While I was studying English, I came across this particular sentence, and I could not clearly understand its meaning, especially the part where 'to' is involved.

I tried searching through dictionary, but 'to' had too many ways of translation and I could not find the suitable one.

Thus, I would like to know how I should translate 'to' in this sentence. And if possible I would very much appreciate it if you can provide other similar examples.
  

Top answer

"to" is an infinitive marker. "

  • "to" is an infinitive marker.
  • "
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5 Answers
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"to" is an infinitive marker. I would say that the infinitive is used in sense 1.2 at http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/to:

Expressing an outcome, result, or consequence

In practice, the meaning is not very different from "All of
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Thanks GPY for clarifying this. I can understand it much more clearly now.

Just to make sure that I understood you, does that mean that since it is 'expressing outcome', that 'thus' or 'therefore' could be used?

=> All of this resonates across American culture, thus finding a literary echo in ~
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samuere=> All of this resonates across American culture, thus finding a literary echo in ~
I would say that "thus" has a stronger sense of reason or consequence.
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samuereAll of this resonates across American culture to find a literary echo in William Faulkner's famous assertion that ~.
It's typically called an "infinitive of result". The way I read it, "to find" can be paraphrased as "and finds" without distorting the idea too much.

CJ
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Thank you GPY and CJ.
So what you mean is that 'to' does have the meaning of 'consequence', but not as strong enough as to use thus and therefore right?

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