Natalia,
Perhaps we need to begin with the fact that the infinitive is a tenseless, base form of the verb, identical, except for "be" with its present tense forms apart from third person. So the infinitive is not always marked by "to."
English has a couple of classes of verbs that take infinitives without "to". Modals are the most obvious of these. May, might, can, could, will, would, shall, should, and must, the grammaticalized modals, all take infinitives without "to." One of the most common errors committed by ESL learners is to insert "to" after a modal. A second class is verbs of perception, like "feel," "see," "hear," "smell", "watch," etc.
I felt wind blow.
I saw the house burn.
I heard the door slam.
I smelled the trash burn.
I watched the shark swim by.
Then there are also a few idiosyncratic verbs, like "help," "let," and "make" that take infinitives without "to." These, however, vary in their ability to take "to."
"Help" works in
I helped cook dinner.
However, if the object of "help" is longer, as in
I helped some friends of mine from Chicago to find an apartment in Muncie.
"to" becomes more likely.
"Let" doesn't allow "to" at all, and "make" rarely takes it.
Then there are semi-modals, like "need," "ought," and "dare." In non-assertive clauses (questions, negatives, conditionals) these can take infinitives without "to," although some of them will sound a bit formal.
Need we leave now?
We need not leave now.
Ought we leave now?
We ought not leave now.
Dare we leave now?
We dare not leave now.
But "need" and "dare" can also behave like normal verbs:
Do we need to leave now?
We don't need to leave now.
Do we dare (to) leave now?
We don't dare (to) leave now.
This doesn't work with "ought," probably because its modal use derives from its older status as the past tense of "owe."
As you can see, there is a good bit of variation in how these various verbs work, across dialects and registers, and it's actually a little messier even than it looks above.
The "to" infinitive develops from the preposition "to" and becomes a common infinitive form in Late Middle English, although forms with it appear in Old English, as in the petition from the Lord's Prayer:
To becume thin rice
To come thy kingdom
Thy kingdom come
where "to" still has something of a directional sense.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Natalie Gerber
Sent: 2009-05-03 17:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: yet another complicated sentence structure
Dear all,
I found Martha's comments on the latest sentence to be extremely helpful. May I add one more sentence for analysis?
"I let her take comfort in the long odds against me."
Is it right to say that "let" is the main verb, "her" is the direct object, and "take comfort in the long odds against me" is an object complement (with internal structure we can ignore)? My impulse is to change the sentence structure to
"I allowed her to take comfort in the long odds against me"
to shore up my sense that "take comfort..." is an infinitive phrase, but this feels like a dodge to me.
Thanks,
Natalie
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