Which form of this sentence is correct?
The sentences of this article are hard for the reader to understand.
The sentences of this article are hard for the reader to be understood.
I, personally, feel the second one is more grammatically correct while the first one is more fluent.
Please provide reason for which one I should use.
The sentences of this article are hard for the reader to understand.
To understand relates to the reader understanding "the sentences", here. No ambiguity exists here; this is the only logical interpretation.
The sentences of this article are hard for the reader to be understood.
To be understood has some issues here. There are two possibilities of where it attaches:
Therefore, I would go with the first version. It is perfectly grammatical, and it makes logical sense.
The sentence could also be phrased thus:
The sentences of this article are hard to understand for the reader.
or
The sentences of this article are hard to be understood by the reader.
Notice the prepositional change in the second rephrasing. (For doesn't seem to work here.) I still don't like this version but at least its intention is clearer.
Lastly, consider the briefest rephrasing of all:
This article's sentences are hard to understand.
This saves several words and removes all ambiguity (except, perhaps, that now I allow for listeners to have the same misinterpretation, but I don't think that harms it a bit).
function of the object and see more examples of it?
– Stephen
Jun 27 '17 at 2:03
They mean different things. I believe the first sentence was what the writer of this sentence was going for.
The sentences of this article are hard for the reader to understand.
...that the reader finds it hard to understand the sentences of this article.
While both sentences are technically correct, the second one makes almost no sense. I say almost because there is a case where the sentences themselves are about a reader, although a better way to phrase that would be
The sentences of this article make it hard for the reader to be understood..
“the sentences are hard” or “to understand the sentences is hard”?
In my opinion, "hard" is a word describing feelings of creatures, only creatures can feel hard. So it can be re-write like this:It’s hard for the reader to understand the sentences of this article.
The construction "For (person A) to (verb)" indicates that person A is the one performing the verb. So in your first sentence, the reader needs to understand the sentences, but finds it difficult. This is a natural and obvious situation.
The construction "For (person A) to be (verbed)" indicates that someone else is performing the verb on person A. (That is, person A is the target or recipient of the action, rather than the performer of it.) So in your second sentence, someone needs to understand the reader, but finds it difficult to do so, because of the sentences. This is acceptable if the reader is reading the article out loud to another listener, but that is a less obvious situation and should be spelled out by prior context.
