Kathleen,

I agree with you.   

There is a close connection semantically between money and its necessity in making purchases, so this might be the origin of the question.  Perhaps the thought is that the money is modified (quantified) by its use for a particular kind of purchase.  

To this I ask about the sentence "He used his hammer to build a house?"  I do not think that the construction of a house would "modify" the meaning of the hammer.  Or even, "He used his hammer to purchase leather."? 

The adverb "enough" or the adjective "sufficient" might take an infinitive phrase as complement (but not of purpose).  Thus we might have "He used enough of his money to purchase leather (to buy a hammer).  This complement does not belong to "money," but to its amount.  Omitting the "enough" we could then have, "He used his money to purchase leather to buy a hammer."  I think we could not have this meaning when the infinitive phrase of purpose is omitted, though someone might cook up a situation.  Some linguists have proposed situations in which the (quasi-)sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" makes sense, so I wouldn't bet on the end of the posible analyses coming soon, if pushed hard enough.   

Bruce Despain

>>> [log in to unmask] 08/03/01 11:04AM >>>
I'll let others deal with the other questions, but this caught my eye:


>How about "He used his money to purchase leather." Does the infinitive
>modify the noun money?

I think that "to purchase leather" is, pretty clearly, what is
traditionally called an "infinitive of purpose."  As such, I think
this would be an adverbial use of the infintive, not a noun-modifying
one.

Kathleen Ward

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html 
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/