8-Infinitive.pptVIP

Lecture 8 Infinitive Infinitive, -ing participle and –ed participle all fall into the non-finite forms of verbs. Grammatical forms of infinitive 1) Grammatical forms infinitive has no tense distinction, nor person or number contrasts. But they can be passive and take the simple, progressive, perfective and perfective progressive forms, e.g. The boy always hopes to be praised by his teacher. I have nothing to regret for. She had no need to be worrying. He is believed to have visited every province of China. The president was reported to have been flying across the Atlantic. Question: How to form a negative infinitive? A negative infinitive is formed by adding not or never immediately before the infinitive to: He promised never to do anything like that again. Mary advised me not to lend him any money. Grammatical forms of infinitive 2) To-infinitive bare infinitiveinfinitive is usually accompanied by “to”, but sometimes without “to” (bare infinitive): Question: Under what circumstances should we use bare infinitive? When following modals, bare infinitive is used. But need dare may be used in to-infinitive form. Does she dare to go there alone? Do we need to pay for the meal? Following semi-auxiliaries, bare infinitive is used, e.g. You’d better not go out. I happened to meet Mary on the way to the library. Grammatical forms of infinitive Bare infinitive following modal idioms such as: would rather, would rather… than, would sooner, would as soon, may/might as well, cannot but…, e.g. He would rather listen to others than talk himself. Since it’s a fine day, we might as well walk. Rather than cause trouble, he left. Sooner than marry that man, she would earn her living as a waitress. Used in some fixed combinations: let go/fly/slip/fall, make do, make believe…, e.g. He did all that just to make believe. We don’t have time for lunch, but we made do with sandwiches. Grammatical forms of infinitive Used in “ causative verb + object”, like make, let, have.. functioning