To Receive Configuration

    He is the first person from Alabama to receive acclaim

"person" is a NounInfinitive – that is, it supports a following infinitive. The NounInfinitive is masked by another prepositional phrase, but is easily found by searching backwards from "to".

The "from" phrase offers no similarity with "acclaim".

    The time from transport configuration to receive configuration shall be..

This could be

The time to receive configuration shall be... – receive is a verb, with "time" being a NounInfinitive – "the time to party".

From transport configuration to receive configuration – receive is an adjective

The (elapsed) time from state to state shall be…

He switched from transmit to receive configuration.

"transmit" and "receive" are similar, and "transmit" is a noun.

He switched from transmit to receive the broadcast.

It doesn’t matter how similar "transmit" is, a noun phrase follows "receive".

If we are not sure whether a "to" is an infinitive introducer or a preposition, we search back to find a NounInfinitive that could handle the Infinitive – that is, semantic modelling would accept it. We also search back for a "from..to" or other structure that would cause the "to" to be a preposition, and check on the similarity of the noun phrases.

Some following nouns can also control whether the previous construction is an infinitive phrase or a prepositional phrase.

He switched the equipment to receive status. – "receive" is a state, or status.

He switched the equipment to receive status information. – the equipment is receiving information.

In some circumstances we will not be able to decide, and will have to create an ambiguous phrase until we can see more of the semantic structure of the sentence.