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A1) Students who exhibit more undesirable academic behaviors feel more strongly that work contributes to less time and energy for studying.

A2) The class is believed to assess subjective feelings of increased knowledge and awareness of the need for a coherent system for studying in response to taking the course.

B1) Fifteen weeks later, the mice were sacrificed and the tissues removed for study.

B2) It's not just a quiet place. I want to have a quiet place for study, but I want to have a social room - a noisy place where you can meet other people.

In A1), A2) studying is used while in B1), B2) study is.
What's the difference between two uses of studying and study. Are they interchangeable?

Bella Swan
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yoonjin kim
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2 Answers2

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In A1 and A2, the verb of study is used in the form of a gerund (functions as a noun).

In B1 and B2, the noun of study is used ("the activity of learning/discovering").

Since the forms of study in all four examples function as nouns, it's difficult for me to explain why one sounds better than the other, even as a native speaker (Western US).

In A1 and A2, for studying seems more idiomatic to me, as well as for study in B1.

In B2 though, either for study or for studying might be grammatically correct, but I agree with user45266 that for studying would be more colloquial in that example of a converstaion.

John B
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Not quite. Here, "study" is being used as a noun, but not in the way one might think. "Study" is a noun refering to the process of studying, here. It's like how some verbs have their own nouns, like "to sell" and "a sale", for example (one might even argue that these nouns were the origin of the verbs). Regardless, the reason that 2A is uncommon is that "to study" only gets used this way rarely. The definition of Zoology, for example is "the study of animals" (obviously simplified).

B2 might be correct, but I would never say "a desk for study" in normal speech. In formal writing, maybe, if I wanted to sound fancy. Barring that, I'd say, "A quiet place to study (possibly ambiguous - am I studying the desk?)" or "for studying".

user45266
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