for him to lose

[navi]

1) It would be good for him to lose.
2) For him to lose would be good.

Can both these sentences have both of these meanings:

a) It would be a good thing if he loses.
b) It would be good thing for him if he loses. He would benefit from losing.

I think that for '2' to have meaning 'b' we would need a comma after 'him'. I think '1' is ambiguous.


Gratefully
Navi

[Phil White]

No comma needed. Both formulations are ambiguous and a comma is simply wrong.

My intuition tells me that if we really wanted to explicitly express meaning b), we would use the formulation you suggest (it would be a good thing for him if he lost") or some some similar formulation ("it would do him good to lose").