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"This chair is too small to stand on."
"This chair is too small to be stood on."
what's the difference? or I can use either one.

hwkal
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    The first is more natural, and implies ' for me ' or 'for a person to stand on'. – Kate Bunting Jan 01 '24 at 09:41
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    If you read books written before circa 1900, you'll encounter the passive infinitive form fairly often, e.g. to be relied on vs to rely on. – TimR Jan 01 '24 at 13:50

1 Answers1

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There's no difference in meaning between too ADJ to VERB and too ADJ to be VERBed, but the latter form has been in long-term decline over centuries...

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Syntactically, it's irrelevant whether ADJ to VERB / to be VERBed is preceded by an "adverb of degree" such as too or not. It's essentially the same construction in...

This product is...
1: ...ready to use
2: ...easy to use
3: ...ready to be used
4: ...easy to be used

...but the second pair are much less common than the first pair. #4 in particular has always been extremely uncommon - in fact, many native would dismiss it out of hand as "non-idiomatic", even though there's no syntactic reason why it sounds so much more "awkward" than #3. My advice is to avoid ADJ to be VERBed in favour of ADJ to VERB wherever possible.

FumbleFingers
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