I can't understand "the first plane to fly"
The original sentence is "What was the name of the first plane to fly across the English Channel?"
Does it mean"What was the name of the first plane which would fly across the English Channel?"
Because in the case "to do" means "in the furture" , right?
Top answer
"What was the name of the first plane to fly across the English Channel ? No, to + verb doesn't mean in the future. The underlined expression is an infinitival clause, and infinitivals are non-finite.
- "What was the name of the first plane to fly across the English Channel ?
- No, to + verb doesn't mean in the future.
- The underlined expression is an infinitival clause, and infinitivals are non-finite.
- Unlike finite clauses, they are not tensed which means the sentence as a whole relies on the verb in the matrix (main) clause for its tense.
- In this case the matrix verb is the past tense "was", so we know the sentence is referring to past time.
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"What was the name of the first plane to fly across the English Channel?
No, to + verb doesn't mean in the future.
The underlined expression is an infinitival clause, and infinitivals are non-finite. Unlike finite clauses, they are not tensed which means the sentence as a whole relies on the verb in the matrix (main) clause for its tense. In this case the matr
0Frank shenDoes it mean"What was the name of the first plane which would fly across the English Channel?"
No.
It means this:
What was the name of the plane that flew across the English Channel before any other plane did?
Here are a couple of other examples.
Who was the first man to discover oxygen?
Joseph Priestly. He
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