find vs. find out

Problematic Sentences:

1. In a recent study, scientists at the University of Mulberry think they have found out one of the main reasons for the hepatitis epidemic.

A couple of sentences later in the same text, we have

2. The scientists found out that every fifth person with a tattoo is infected.

My internal grammar urges me to remove out from both these sentences. Why?

DCE defines find out as "to learn information, after trying to discover it or by chance" and gives the examples:

3. He hurried off to find out what the problem was.
4. I found out that he was having an affair with another woman.
5. A number of tests have been carried out to find out if these drugs have any effect.
6. We never found out her real name.

OALD defines find out as "to get some information about sth/sb by asking, reading, etc" and explains the differences among discover, invent, find out, learn, and know as follows:

• If you invent something, you make or design something that did not exist before.
• If you discover something, you find something that already exists or learn about it for the first time, before anyone else does: Who discovered America?
• You can also discover a piece of information that other people knew but you didn't: When did you discover that she's married?
• If you learn something, you come to know it by study or enquiry: learning new vocabulary.
• You can find something out either by chance or by study or enquiry: When did you find out that she's married?
• If you know something, you have that knowledge or information in your mind: I couldn't find out what the word meant as it wasn't in my dictionary, but John told me, so now I know it.

These definitions do not help much to distinguish find out from find, though, since find often similarly implies learning

"by experience/testing" (OALD):

7. The report found that 30% of the firms studied had failed within a year.
8. The doctors found that her blood contained poison.

or "by chance or experience" (DCE):

9. When I woke up, I found that I was in the hospital.
10. I find that I have half an hour to spare, so we can have our talk now.
11. We're finding that fewer and fewer peopole are buying this brand.

So the difference between learning by chance or as the result of a purposeful effort does not seem to be the distinguishing semantic feature between find and find out.

CGEL seems more on track in identifying the meaning of the particle out as 'completion,' "as in point out, seek out, figure out, work out, etc." (§16.12).

Let us try substituting find out for find in the sentences above:

7a. ?The report found out that 30% of the firms studied had failed within a year.
8a. The doctors found out that her blood contained poison.
9a. ?When I woke up, I found out that I was in the hospital.
10a. ?I find out that I have half an hour to spare, so we can have our talk now.
11a. We're finding out that fewer and fewer peopole are buying this brand.

7a would be equally odd with discovered. It is semantically incongruous to think of a report as discovering something, since a report is by definition a description of something already known. But we can eliminate this incongruity and compare

7b. The investigating team found out that 30% of the firms studied had failed within a year.

with

7c. The investigating team found that 30% of the firms studied had failed within a year.

In 7c found is equivalent to determined or concluded, rather than discovered. It does not imply that the finding was unexpected. This is the implication in 17b, equivalent to learned, to their surprise--or, following CGEL, the implication can be that the finding was definitive or complete, equivalent to established the fact that.

8a also seems to emphasize one of these two ideas--either that the finding (if it was by chance) was unexpected, or that it was conclusive or complete.

Find and find out in 9 and 9a are both equivalent to discovered, but 9a emphasizes the notion of unexpectedness. It also has the effect of distinguishing two events--one being the waking up and the other the finding out. In 9, awoke and found describe simultaneous (or almost simultaneous) events.

10a is possible in this context: "They told me I wouldn't have a free minute, but now I find out that I have half an hour to spare, so we can have our talk now." Here again the implication of surprise, that something new and unexpected has been learned, is clear. Find in 10 is more equivalent to see (I see that I have half an hour to spare), in 10a more like discover, to my surprise.

In 11 finding can be replaced by learning. 11a implies that what is being learned is either unexpected, or becoming more and more complete, definite, or clear.

Let us take it as a working hypothesis, then, that out emphasizes either the element of surprise or completeness in the learning process.

What can this tell us about 1 and 2? Is it the emphasis on unexpectedness or completion that is disturbing?

In 1, we must consider that find out is relatively infrequently followed by a noun phrase, and seems to be affected by collocation restrictions, i.e. is not a productive grammatical structure in modern-day (American) English. This can be confirmed by looking through the examples collected from the literary corpus (see below), many of which seem odd in the same way as 1. As an exercise, try going through these sentences and substituting a more likely expression, in contemporary English, for find out where it sounds odd. Click here for English examples.

In 2, both the notions of unexpectedness and of completeness seem incongruous. Either one raises the function of this statistic from a more precise confirmation of what has already been said to the main focus of attention. This is what is disturbing. Rather like pronouncing a word with the accent on the wrong syllable, the focus is on the wrong idea.

Here are some more examples of German learners' usage of this structure. Which of them sound odd, and which of them less so? Replace find out with another expression where it seems odd.

12. I need to find out and present my ideas on that.
13. We need to find out the attitudes of people concerning loneliness
14. Teachers should try to find out interesting topics to discuss.
15. Let us try to find out the combination of circumstances that led to this problem.
16. The retailers need more time to find out the best times to keep their shops open.
17. Elizabeth is standing in front of the mirror to find out the length of the skirt that suits her best.
18. Exploring outer space will help us find out the origin of our world.
19. Cloning is another way to find out the secrets of life.
20. The purpose of the test is to find out the students' writing and grammar skills.
21. The purpose of the test is to find out the students' ability to write an essay on an unknown topic.