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He shook his head. “No. You were forced to wed him. I’ve seen your aunt bully you. She made you do it.”
    Deirdre laughed shortly. “You cretin, I proposed to him!” She wiped the back of her hand across her brow. “I’ve loved that stubborn idiot for years. It broke my heart when I thought he’d marry my cousin.”
    Something in her voice seemed to pierce his delusion at last. He gazed at her as if he’d never seen her before. “But. . . you saw how I loved you. You saw and you smiled to see it! What sort of monster are you, that you would toy with me so?” (Celeste Bradley, The Duke Next Door)

To infinitive’s seeing time seems equal with your smiling and the seeing is the reason or condition for smiling. Are these all right or do I have to see otherwise? (for example, seeing is anterior to smiling, and to see is, in fact, to have seen, and the latter is replaced by the former, as a tense simplification (CGEL,p158). For you know the time sequence well, without perfect tense.)

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  • It seems to me quite a few of your questions concern the exact temporal relationships (the sequence of events) implied by particular verb forms. But English is often extremely "loose" in such areas - and as you say yourself, in this specific context the time sequence is obvious from the semantic content. Thus, I loved, you saw, you smiled represents three "consecutive" activities (as with I came, I saw, I conquered). The infinitive to see [it] is just a (more likely, here) stylistic choice over seeing.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 8, 2013 at 16:31
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    @Listenever Smiled to see and smiled to think are standard English. You should have no trouble finding additional examples of each in COCA, if you wish.
    – user230
    Commented Nov 17, 2013 at 5:10
  • @snailboat, yes thank you. I got better understanding of the structure, and I'm quite comfortable when I see it.
    – Listenever
    Commented Nov 17, 2013 at 5:51

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The verb smile doesn't support this usage; it is a dubious construction, evidently from the "paperback-romance-novel-ese" dialect of English.

Smiling is an external action, and an action verb with a to-infinitive generally means "in order to".

He stood up to see better. (He stood up so that he could see better.)

She studied to pass the exam. (She studied in order to pass the exam.)

You smiled to see it. * (You smiled so as to to see it. *)

One can smile when one sees something; alternatively "seeing something makes one smile". Better versions:

Seeing it made you smile.

It made you smile to see it.

You smiled { upon seeing | when you saw } it.

Seeing it, you smiled.

This may not be the exact rule, but my intuition is that when the word be is used to express an emotional state, and there is a to-infinitive then that state can be a reaction to what is expressed by the to-infinitive:

He was glad to see it. (He became glad in reaction to seeing it.)

I am pleased to serve my customers. (Serving my customers makes me pleased.)

Although the grammatical pattern is the same as the first group, the semantics is different. "he was glad to see it" cannot be interpreted as "he was glad so that he could see it", whereas, conversely, "he was forced to see it" cannot be interpreted as "seeing it forced him". This difference seems to be linked with the category of verb: that the verb is "to be", expressing the internal state of gladness.

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  • There is an example of "smiled to think" in OALD. "He smiled to think how naive he used to be."
    – Listenever
    Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 14:12
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    @Listenever Could just be sloppy work on their part. I have though of an example of an external action word which is actually used this way commonly: shudder to think (shudder as a result of thinking something, not shudder in order to think), shudder to see.
    – Kaz
    Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 16:57
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    Still, when shudder is used this way, it doesn't really denote an action, like smiling. People don't actually shudder when they say "I shudder to think"; it's a feeling, not unlike "I loathe to think".
    – Kaz
    Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 17:54

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