Sentence Complexity and Embedding

Gerunds, Infinitives and Participles

Activity 12.4: Defining Infinitives

Exercise A: Find and label the parts of these sentences.  What type of word is used for each syntactic role?

1. To err is human.
2. Sean likes to sleep.
3. The best response is to ignore him.
4. The best suggestion, to have a carwash, came from Shelly

Define Infinitives:

Exercise B: Underline the infinitives in the following sentences.  Tell how they are used.

1. Homer likes football. ____________________________________
2. Homer likes to watch football. _______________________________
3. Homer doesn’t like to play football. ________________________________________
4. Football is fun. _____________________________________________
5. To watch football is fun. _______________________________
6. To play football is dangerous. ________________________
7. It’s fun to watch football. _________________________________
8. It’s dangerous to play football. _________________________________
9. The kids went outside to play football. _____________________________________
10. The main purpose is to impress the cheerleaders. ________________________

Answers

Like gerunds, infinitives are something of a hybrid, but unlike gerunds, they aren’t so half-and-half in nature.  In form, they are entirely like verbs.  They are the base form of a verb, generally accompanied by the infinitive marker, and they can take all the verb modifiers and they can take predicate structure according to their subcategory.  They can, however, act like nouns because they can play some of the roles that nouns generally play.  They can function as subjects, direct objects, subject complements, and appositives.  On occasion, they can function like an adverb or adjective, as well.  Most commonly, they can tell the purpose, as in sentence 9 above, acting like an adverb.  More rarely they can serve to complete an adjective, as in I’m afraid to open the door.  On other rare occasions, they can serve to help specify a noun, as in the example, The man to guard closely is Kobe Bryant.

Activity 12.5: Identifying Infinitives

Exercise A: Look at the following infinitives and describe their structures.

1. To work until 5:00 is common in the US.
2. I like for Sharon to cook dinner early on Sundays.
3. To cook well means that the food doesn’t come out of cans.
4. It tired the participants to run for a long time.
5. I was content to nap in the sun.
6. The dean is the person to sign your graduation form.
7. To argue constantly really hurt their relationship.
9. For him to say that really made me mad.

Exercise B: Look at the following sentences for infinitives and describe their structures.

1. I hope not to get a bad grade on the test.
2. I hope not to be driving at sunset.
3. I hope not to be hit by another car.
4. For the world to have eradicated small pox is a great accomplishment.
5. For the world not to have eradicated polio is a disappointment.
6. For the world not to have been destroyed by nuclear weapons is great.

Answers

Like other verb forms, infinitives can have voice and aspect, and they can be modified in the same ways verbs can be modified.  In exercise 1 above, sentences 1, 2, 4, and 5 show an infinitive with an adverbial prepositional phrase modifying it.  Sentences 2, 3, and 7 show an infinitive modified by an adverb.  Sentences 2, 6, and 9 show infinitives that have their own direct objects.  In exercise 2, sentences 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 show negative infinitives.  Notice that the prescriptive rule for the placement of not is to the left of the infinitive marker, not between the marker and the base form itself.

Sentences in exercise 2 also show that infinitives can have voice and aspect.  Sentence 1 is a negative infinitive, sentence 2 shows a negative progressive infinitive.  Sentence 3 shows a negative passive infinitive, and sentence 4 shows a perfect infinitive.  Sentence 5 shows a negative perfect infinitive, and sentence 6 shows a negative passive perfect infinitive.

One interesting feature is that active infinitives can have an agent, and if they do, the agent is set up as the object of a preposition.  The preposition is typically for.

In conclusion, infinitives are almost all verb, but they get used in several of the ways that nouns are used.  They can also act as adverbs or adjectives in a few cases, but it might help to think of them as ¾ verb and ¼ other.

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