Hi Clint,

 

I figure that if I pull off a goof that large, I at least have to squirm about it publicly (and remember it the next fifty times a student makes a typo and I start drifting into Hubris Mode).  With the command infinitive, my first impulse is to treat it in the same way you do – after all, we have other quasimodals like “have to” and “ought to” with a fossilized infinitive-marker tacked on to them, so why not “BE to”?  There’s a *different* “BE to” sequence in which there’s more clearly an infinitive that acts either as a subject complement or an adverbial (I have no objections to the idea that an adverbial, like an adverbial PP, for example, is a subject complement, but I know  not everyone agrees with that position).

 

                This is to say that such problems are unavoidable.

 

The existence of that construction pushes me toward the “BE to as quasimodal” position for the first type, since it provides me with a nice, neat structural account of the difference.

 

There are a few problems  that keep nagging me, though. The first – and  this is one that applies to “have to” as well – is the issue of tense and subject/verb agreement marking on the first element (am to / are to / is to / was to/ were to).  If “BE to” is a fused element, part of it shouldn’t be variable like that – but we usually discount that point when analyzing “have to,” so I suppose it doesn’t count for much here either.

 

Unlike “have to,” though, the components of “BE to” show up separated in questions (“Was I to file that paperwork?” // * “Did I be to file that paperwork? “vs. *”Had I to file that paperwork”//”Did I have to file that paperwork?”). I take that as indicating that the BE form is more fully the finite marker in the sentence, in a way that the “have” in “have to” isn’t.

 

I end up wanting to analyze the command infinitive as simply a construction that doesn’t necessarily fit all of the more general rules of English, drawing on the construction-grammar idea that constructions can have their own “nano-grammars.” But then, of course, I start worrying that I’m cheating if I do that….

 

Thanks! – Bill Spruiell

 

 

Hi, Bill,

 

Believe me, I never doubted your knowledge.  I would be interested to know your take on the command infinitive though.

 

Pax,

Clint

 

 

 

Clint:

 

Mea maxima culpa (profunda culpa?) on the infinitive glitch. I really do know better. Honest! – Bill Spruiell

 

 

Hi, Bill,

 

In this example, I would have to go with the compound preposition since there is no verb following the “to” but rather a noun, “lack.”  I read “due to a lack” as a prepositional phrase analogous to “due to illness” in a sentence like, “He missed work due to illness.”

 

Regarding the command infinitive, I generally consider it as part of the finite verb phrase.  Compare “you are to do the homework” with “you will do the homework” where “will” can substitute for “are to.”  “I have to pay my bills” = “I must pay my bills.”  “She is going to leave soon” = “She will leave soon.”  And so it goes.

 

Best,

Clint

 

 

 

The students in one of my (college) grammar classes are starting to analyze text from “naturally-occurring” sources (as opposed to textbook examples) and bringing in sentences that stump them so we can discuss them in class (and so I can repeatedly notice that English is weird, which anyone who teaches grammar needs to be reminded of as often as possible).  A recent example involved a construction like the following (something like this may have come up on the list before, but if so, it was long enough ago that it’s not in my saved folder; apologies if it is indeed repetition):

 

                These problems were due simply to a lack of water in the surrounding area.

 

I could think of two analyses off the bat:

 

(1)          “due” is an adjective being modified by an infinitive phrase (this is how I usually deal with “able to…” etc.

 

(2)          “due to” is a compound preposition, analogous to “because of.”

 

I used the fact that “simply” is wedged between “due” and “to” to argue for version #1, since there’s no parallel example that would involve “because simply of.”

 

But… I later realized that examples like the following don’t sound that strange:

 

                We canceled the game because – and only because – of the weather.

 

Does that example strike y’all (you’ns, you guys, youse) as possible, or have I done the usual linguist trick of cogitating myself into a corner? I also have to figure out what to do with “command infinitives” like “You are to do the homework”…

 

Thanks – Bill Spruiell

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