<p>What is wrong with this sentence:</p>
<p>He was somewhat uncertain about how to use the new machine and asked for more specific intructions be sent. No Error</p>
<h2>-</h2>
<h2>-</h2>
<h2>-</h2>
<h2>-</h2>
<h2>-</h2>
<h2>-</h2>
<h2>-</h2>
<p>-
The answer is C, why?</p>
<p>It should be "asked that." I don't have any actual, solid grammatical facts to back me up, but I know that the "be" in "be sent" is a certain kind of verb form (I think the subjunctive, just like how you learn in French/Spanish etc.), so because of the uncertainty of whether or not the instructions will be sent, the sentence should read "asked that" instead of "asked for."</p>
<p>Yeah it's the subjunctive.</p>
<p>does anybody know why we use "that" and not "for"? I thought it was perfectly idiomatic.</p>
<p>Well, that's a tricky one. "asked for" would be right if it were "asked for more specific examples". Since you have the subjunctive, however, you need the "asked (in the sense of demanded) that more specific examples be sent (in the sense of: should be sent)". You cannot say "asked for more specific should be sent", right?</p>