Talk:Infinitive/Archive 1

"May" and "might" as prepositions?
Since when are "may" and "might" considered conditional prepositions? I hesistate to change things, because there are some facts in the article that surprised me when I found out that they were in agreement with what the dictionary says. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.82.134.xxx (talk • contribs).

"Preposition" is one of those words that is used most often by laymen in sense different from how it is used by experts (in this case, linguists). The usage here is the linguistic one: a word that comes at the beginning of a phrase-treated-as-a-word (as opposed to postpositions, which come at the end of such a phrase). In common English usage, though, "preposition" refers to only one kind of linguistic preposition--the kind that take nouns as objects to form adject-phrases or adverb-phrases. English grammarians would refer to the "may" in "you may be right" as an auxilliary verb rather than a preposition, but linguists would call it a preposition that takes a verb as an object and creates a new verb-phrase. I'm not sure how to better word that. --LDC

I doubt you will find a linguist who will say it's a preposition. In "I can see", if "can" is a preposition, that "can" cannot have a past tense, as in "I could see". -- Mike Hardy

Most linguistic writings I've seen refer to them as auxiliary verbs or, more specifically, as modal verbs. The term "preposition" is usually reserved for particles that modify noun phrases. - Gwalla 20:40, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

That "dare" and "need" introduce infinitives
Are these right? From the preceeding paragraph I understood the verb after dare or need is the infintive, not dare or need themselves:


 * 1) I dare say you've come home just a moment ago. ("dare" is the infinitive)
 * 2) Need you be so offensive? ("need" is the infinitive)

-Wikibob | Talk 01:09, 2004 Sep 28 (UTC)


 * Agreed and changed —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.232.83.132 (talk • contribs).

Infinitive with may and might
I'm not sure why verbs following may and might are classified as "infinitive", unless we mean "uninflected". If that's what we mean, then the other nine or so auxiliaries should be included: can, could, shall, should, will, would, do (and its inflected forms), must, and some other that I've forgotten. If it's not, I think the "may" and "might" cases should be dropped. Perhaps things would be cleared up if the author of this section would cite their source.

I'm not changing the text because there are several possible "right answers" and I don't want to prejudge the issue. It would be nice if we could say more clearly what an infinitive is, giving diagnostics that would answer the question of whether any given verb form in a piece of text was or wasn't an example of the infinitive. There are two possible kinds of diagnostics. First there are formal tests like "Can you replace the verb with a past tense form?" (If you can, it's not an infinitive.) Second are semantic tests having to do with the meaning of the sentence -- these are much trickier.

Anyway, I seem to be blithering. If anyone out there in Wikiland has a copy of the magisterial Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, they should consult it on this subject. I don't have one (because it's expensive).

ACW 20:35, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * How much and why? lysdexia 21:30, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * You are absolutely right. Not only after verbs following "may" and "might" infinitives, but verbs following "can", "could", "shall", "should", "will", "do", "must", etc are also infinitives.  Modal and auxiliary verbs take bare infinitives.  There are certainly are authoritative sources for this and I'll provide them if anyone doubts it. --Rjp08773 20:48, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Verbs followed by to be?
Why is 'to be' singled out? As far as I can see, none of the examples in this section actually has a passive invinitive (save the first - 'to be elected'), and could just as easily be replaced with any other infinitive, passive or active (e.g. She is said to dance well). The use of the infinitive with a 'reporting verb' is just another way of forming an indirect statement, no? Not sure how it should be changed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 166.82.228.193 (talk • contribs).