Without adopting a particular theory, I suspect the choice of analysis depends in part on the presence or absence of "to." Many English verbs take infinitives without" to," verbs like "let," "make," and perception verbs like "see," "hear," "watch," etc. And, of course, the nine modal auxiliaries notably take infinitives without "to." There are a few verbs that behave both ways, like "need" and "ought." We can say "You need not do that" and "You ought not leave yet" but also "You need to do that" and "You ought to leave now," which is why "need" and "ought" are often called "semi-modals." So whether a verb is modal or not doesn't depend simply on whether it occurs without "to" or not. It is very much a semantic function.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brett Reynolds
Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 3:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: nominal use of prepositional phrases? prep phrase as direct object?
Importance: Low
On 2010-09-04, at 3:15 PM, J. Hill wrote:
> 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?
The same thing has occurred to me, and I find it an appealing notion. But I would say you need to be clear about what system you're working in. Syntactically, I think the analysis has serious problems. (In fact, syntactically, I would go so far as to say that auxiliaries typically function as the head of their own VP.) Semantically, I think the idea stands on firmer ground, but then I know very little about semantics, so I'm just speculating.
Best,
Brett
-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning Toronto, Ontario, Canada [log in to unmask]
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