Function of the infinitive phrase in ‘try to do’
Hello, everyone,
“He must try to do better (next time).”
Q1. While I’ve seen a few ways to parse the to infinitive phrase - ‘to do better’ as follows, which, do you think, is the predominant one in this current mainstream?
A) some say, this phrase is functioning as the direct object of the transitive verb ‘try’.
B) this phrase is a complement of head verb – ‘try’ under ‘complement pair forms a catenative construction’. (by 'A Students Introduction to English Grammar')
C) this phrase is the obligatory adjunct in the form of an infinitive clause under ‘catenative constructions’, which will be termed pseudo-coordination. That is, ‘He must try to do better.’ is similar to ‘He must try and do’ (by ‘A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language’)
Q2. Is there any possibility for you as natives to replace ‘to do better’ with ‘so as to do better’ or ‘in order to do better’?
Your replies would be really appreciated.
Top answer
Of your three choices, I'm inclined to go with B and say simply that we're dealing here with a catenative construction. That makes more sense to me than calling infinitives direct objects, which to my mind should be nouns, or at least more noun-like. And I'm not fond of a lot of the unusual terminology found in the linguistics approach, so terms like 'obligatory adjunct' and 'pseudo-coordination' don't exactly appeal to me.
- Of your three choices, I'm inclined to go with B and say simply that we're dealing here with a catenative construction.
- That makes more sense to me than calling infinitives direct objects, which to my mind should be nouns, or at least more noun-like.
- And I'm not fond of a lot of the unusual terminology found in the linguistics approach, so terms like 'obligatory adjunct' and 'pseudo-coordination' don't exactly appeal to me.
- (In fact, 'obligatory adjunct' sounds contradictory to me.
- 'obligatory' suggests we're dealing with a complement, which is not an adjunct.
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Of your three choices, I'm inclined to go with B and say simply that we're dealing here with a catenative construction. That makes more sense to me than calling infinitives direct objects, which to my mind should be nouns, or at least more noun-like. And I'm not fond of a lot of the unusual terminology found in the linguistics approach, so terms like 'obligatory adjunct' and 'pseudo-coordina
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