That was the fourth time for him to leave home一句有什么问题

■倪肖丁（西安）

葛传槼先生编著的《英语惯用法词典》（上海译文出版社2002）指出：下面两句意思相同，第二句不算正当：

That was the fourth time for him to leave home.

That was his fourth time to leave home.

但据我所知，葛先生的这一说法似乎并不准确。套用《英语惯用法词典》的话说，上述两句都“不算正当”，因为英语不是这样说的。

英语中表达“这是某人第几次做某事”，可用be the first/last/... time (that)+从句。比如可以说：

This is the first time (that) I've been to London.

但不说:

*This is the first time for me to go to London. 

OALD对此有专门的提醒。

Swan在PEU中也明确指出这一结构中不能用动词不定式。例如：

Is this the first time that you have stayed here?  (NOT ... the first time for you to stay here)

所以，That was the fourth time for him to leave home和That was his fourth time to leave home均都不符合英语习惯用法。

但同时须指出的是，尽管英语不说*Is this the first time for you to stay here，但Swan在PEU中给出的理由却不能成立。

Swan指出：最高级和序数词（包括序数词、next、last、only）(所修饰的名词)可以与动词不定式连用。例如：

He's the oldest athlete ever to win an Olympic gold medal.

She's the only scientist to have won three Nobel prizes.

但Swan同时指出：不能说*Is this the first time for you to stay here? 其理由是：只有在最高级作为不定式主语的情况下才可用这一结构，但Time不是stay的主语（This structure is only possible when the superlative has a subject relationship with the infinitive. Time is not the subject of stay.）

按Swan的这一逻辑，就无法解释下面的例句：

It was the first opportunity for the second-term congressman and former television producer to address a national political convention.（LDOCE-Example Bank）

This is positively the last chance for the industry to establish such a system. （CCED）

在以上例句中，opportunity不是to address的主语，chance也不是to establish的主语，但这两个例句都是符合习惯用法的正确表达。因为，当to不定式前添加了for sb/sth以后，不定式的逻辑主语就成了介词for后的sb/sth，这在语法逻辑上完全没有问题。

由此可知，This/It is the first/second/last time for sb后接to不定式之所以使用不当，仅在于其不符合英语的表达习惯，而不在于最高级所修饰的名词能否充当不定式的主语。正如前文例句所示，如果把其中表示次数的time换成其它名词，只要语义逻辑通顺，最高级或序数词（所修饰的名词）不充当to不定式的主语也完全没有问题。