'Associate' with no PP?

[Damien Hall]

Just spotted, the following quotation from Sally Levitt Steinberg, author
of _The Donut Book_:

"Doughnuts have been handed out when people want to associate a good time."

The sentence seems to originate in this article from _Forbes Traveler_:

http://www.forbestraveler.com/food-drink/americas-best-doughnuts-story.html

and it is quoted in another two places according to Google.

It seems that this is an entire sentence (there's no indication that a PP
has been chopped off by an editor in quoting it), and so it seems to me
that the sense is '... when people want to associate a good feeling with
(their memory of) some event at which doughnuts are handed out'. This
particular use of _associate_ in a transitive sense but without a PP is
unfamiliar to me, and I don't think it's quite the same as any of the _OED_
definitions. Anyone come across it before?

Damien

--
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
YORK
YO10 5DD
UK

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