Infinitive of purpose or “for verb-ing”
The chambers inside the pyramid were closed (to/for) visitors (to clean and repair/for cleaning and repairing)
Which is the correct Alternative in both brackets, and why? How can I understand to use correct grammar in everyday English?
The essence required is:
The chambers were closed so that no more visitors would come inside them and because the chambers needed maintenance.
Why don’t we use napoleon as a reference in our everyday life experience?
The chambers inside the
pyramid were closed to visitors for cleaning and repair.
Is maintenance better than repair?
Here to is used to indicate the parties affected by the Shutdown of the chambers. For is not used in the sense of for the purpose of.
The sentence includes two prepositional verbs, that are specific meanings.
Close to means to block access by a category of people or things that follow the preposition.
Open means block access to accomplish a particular purpose. Close for means block access to accomplish a particular purpose.
Your sentence contains both, even though the word close is not repeated.
The chamber of the pyramid were of stone and were regarded as large, and the walls were small, and were locked to visitors for the rest of the pyramid. The chambers were closed to visitors for cleaning and repair.
Why do we need to change our philosophy and the way we think about change?
In various cases where you evoke the mental notion of a “channel” or “connection” that potentially makes something available, the choice of preposition is “to”: It
is accessible/associable/perceptible to visitors/humans.
Often, in such cases (including yours), words like ‘for is often possible’, but is often… evoked from the point of view of or for the benefit of. Also both alternatives are grammatical but evoke subtly different ideas. In this particular case, the likely idea that needs to be expressed is that of “simple availability”, and probably for that reason, speakers would tend to opt for “to” in this case.
The use of the infinitive usually indicates the same subject as the previously expressed
- subject, whereas in this case, it would not be the public that was doing the cleaning (this isn’t a hard and fast rule: it’s perfectly possible to have the implied subject of an infinitive be different to one previously expressed, but this tends to happen where there is a very clear or “default” subject intended); the use of ‘to’ with the infinitive strongly suggests the initiation of an action; there is
Compare your sentence with the following, where if you apply the factors above, the balance swings in favour of a verb:
“Most libraries are open to the public in their leisure.”
