Another question, with equal measure of naivete as the last, no doubt. I
hope I can make it understandable, since I am dealing with another
language here:

In Spanish, the informal future works this way:

conjugated form of "ir" [to go] + "a" + infinitive. [Voy a comer=I'm
going to eat.]

In a sentence like "I'm going to the store," the "a" is easy to explain
as the preposition "to" [Voy a la tienda.] But with an infinitive a
question is raised--and over the years I have had a few discerning
students in Elementary Spanish classes ask me what the "a" is, since the
infinitive in Spanish has no "to", but is contained within the verbal in
it's 'ar', 'er', or 'ir' endings [hablar= to talk; comer=to eat; vivir=
to live, etc.]. So in the sentence "Voy a comer," (I'm going to eat) the
students have wondered why it isn't just "Voy comer." It's a general
rule that we use the 'a' in Spanish with verbs of motion or direction,
so maybe with the infinitive it's just an untranslatable function, like
the use of the 'a' in Spanish before personal direct objects. But I'm
wondering: In English, in the sentence "I'm going to eat,"  is the 'to'
part of the infinitive, or is it possibly a preposition taking an elided
infinitive as its object?

Thanks for any help with this tortured question!

Kent

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