From: amunn@macbeth.umd.edu (Alan Munn)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 7 Apr 92 03:09:57 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

In article <1992Apr5.190053.12271@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> ritley@uiucmrl.bitnet () writes:
>
>It has always perplexed me that the
>infinitives in English are referred to with the word 'to',
>such as 'to be', 'to make', etc., but that the infinitives
>in some other languages are often referred to as single words
>(sein, machen; ser, hacer; etc.).
>
>Might anyone know why this is so, or whether there are
>other languages which refer to their infinitives as English does?

There are two different kinds of answers to this question, which may
be related to real differences in English infinitives or not.  

As Bert Peeters observed, Modern English does not have any
inflectional morphology marking the infinitive to distinguish it from
say present tense, so it might be useful to use the 'to' when citing
infinitives in grammar books.  Most, but not all infinitives in
English have a 'to' preceding them.  (More on this below).  This is
the 'social practice' answer which is how do languages *cite*
infinitives.

Other posters have added other Germanic languages and said that these
languages *do* have a morphological infinitival marker, yet still cite
some type of 'to'-like element 'zu' etc.  I'm not sure how prevalent
this is however, as a quick glance in a couple of German textbooks
cite verbs without any preposition, e.g. 'finden' to find, not 'zu
finden' to find.  Given this data point, Bert may be correct after all.

On the other hand, there are lots of cases in many languages where
infinitives (with or without overt infinitival morphology) need some
kind of element which looks like 'to'.  In German I think this is
always 'zu' as in English, but in French it can be 'a' or 'de'
depending on the verb.  (Grave accent on the 'a' ignored.)

Here the differences become more subtle, and perhaps there is a
grammatical answer to the question as well.  In English there are
basically 3 kinds of verbs which do *not* need 'to' infinitives:
perception verbs (1a), causatives (1b) and  (some) modals (1c).

(1) a.  I saw/heard/smelt John (*to) leave
    b.  I made/had John (*to) leave
    c.  I must/can/might (*to) leave

In all other cases, the infinitive must have 'to' before it.

In French, however, there are far more kinds of verbs which do not
require the prepostions 'a' or 'de', such as 'semble' "seems",
'savoir' "know", 'pretendre' "pretend", 'croire' "believe", in
addition to the three English types above.  Because
of this, there are some reasons to believe that the 'to' in English is
not quite the same as the 'a' or 'de' in French.  Consider the
following data (originally from Kayne, I think)

(2) a.	John seems to have left
    b.	Jean semble (*d')etre parti
    c. *John seems that is smart
    d. *Jean semble qu'il est intelligent

The data in (2) show that in French you can't have 'de' with a raising
verb like 'semble', but you can have 'to' in English.  This would
follow if 'de' were in the same position as the complementiser 'that'
in the corresponding tensed clauses which block raising.

(3) a.	I told him not to see anyone
    b.	I told him to not see anyone
    c. *Je lui ai dit ne de voir personne
    d.  Je lui ai dit de ne voir personne

The data in (3) show that the negative element can't go before the
'de' in French, but 'not' can precede 'to' in English.  This would
also follow if 'de' were a complementiser.

(4) a.  I told him where to go
    b.  I would prefer for him to go  [If you get this construction]
    c. *Je lui ai dit ou d'aller      [= 4a]
    d. *Je lui ai dit d'ou aller      [= 4a]
    e.  Je lui ai dit ou aller      [= 4a]

Again in (4a,b) 'to' in English is not in complementary distribution
with (certain) overt complementisers, but 'de' is never allowed if
there is something else in the Comp postion.

Given all this, there may be a linguistic reason why we cite
infinitives with 'to' as well -- it has a much closer connection to
the verb (perhaps as an Inflectional element) than the corresponding
prepostions in French and Spanish (which may be complementisers rather
than inflectional elements).  I'm not sure how this works in other
Germanic languages.  Perhaps someone wants to take this side on?

Alan Munn

--
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