One suspicion I've harbored for years about the constructions like "I hope to improve," "tends to go," "decided to go," "appears to go," etc., is that the main verb is actually the infinitive and the first verb we see is actually a different kind of modal auxiliary verb.  Here's my line of thinking:

- like modals, the verbs "hope, tend, decided, appears" give information about the mood in which we should take the verb/actions "improve, go."
- when normal modals are used in a verb phrase, they dictate that the verb coming after them must be in the base, or infinitive, form.  Normally, this infinitive form elides the "to" (thus, "must go," "can eat"), but a different kind of modal might modify the type of infinitive needed.  More specifically, if "hope," etc., above are another class of modals, it could be a more open set than the normal list of 8-10.  Therefore, to avoid confusion, the full form of the infinitive may be needed.
- in these constructions, thinking of the infinitive as a nominal instead of the actual main verb of the sentence doesn't seem to fit my natural sense of the sentence (something naturally open to interpretation).  That is, I see "I hope to improve" more as a version of "I improve" than as a version of "I hope something."  Maybe that's because verb phrases used as nominals will always inhabit that gray area between nouns and verbs, but I still see "improving" as the main point of the verb phrase.

What do you all think about this possibility?

J. Hill

On 2010-09-03, at 11:19 PM, Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar wrote:

> I am interested in your analysis of "I hope to improve." If I read your post correctly, you agree that "to improve" is an infinitive phrase functioning as the direct object of the finite verb "hope". You don't want to call it "nominal" though because it couldn't be replaced by a noun? What about a pronoun such as "I hope it"? Pronouns are very "nounish" aren't they?

I would even go further and say that that pronouns are not just nounish; they're full-blown nouns. But I wouldn't analyze 'to improve' as an object in 'I hope to improve' and I find 'I hope it' a pretty questionable construction. But let's grant my example was poorly chosen. What about 'he tends to go', 'decided to go' 'appears to go', 'happened to go' 'she determined to go', or 'they looked to be leaving'?

> It seems to me to be more a matter of what the verb chooses and that there is a distinct class of verbs that force a PP or an infinitive to be the object.

Again, this is a terminological choice. I would prefer to keep 'object' for nouns (NPs) and use 'complement' for PPs, 'to'-infinitives, bare infinitives, 'that'-clauses, etc. One upshot of this choice is that when we have adjectives or nouns followed by 'to'-infinitives (e.g., I had a plan to go), we don't want to be calling 'to go' an object of the noun 'plan'. And yet the relationship between 'plan' and 'to go' is basically the same as it is when 'plan' is a verb. By calling 'to go' a complement, you capture both situations nicely.

A comedy of errors can be amusing, but by definition it's full of misapprehensions. Why needlessly complicate things?

Best,
Brett

-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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