Is "to verb" an object in a sentence?

Question

I learned that an English sentence was basically structured like this: Subject + Verb + Object. So, in this sentence for example: "I love to eat", is "to eat" an object?

BillJ · Accepted Answer

The simple answer to your question is no.

[1] I love music. [English SVO]

[2] Ben muzigi seviyorum. [Turkish SOV]

English is indeed often called an SVO language, but this is mainly to distinguish it from other languages that have a different word order. For example, Turkish is SOV, as can be seen in [2] where the object "muzigi" occurs before the verb "seviyorum".

But that is not to say that every expression in English that follows the verb is an object; far from it fact, since just about every kind of phrase and clause can follow it.

[3] I love to eat.

For example, in [3] (your sentence) "to eat" follows the verb, but it doesn't look much like an object, does it? That's because it isn't, at least not in modern grammar. It's an infinitival clause functioning as a complement of "love".

More precisely, "love" is a catenative verb, and "to eat" is its catenative complement.

The term 'catenative' comes from the Latin word for "chain", which is appropriate here since "love" and "eat" form a chain of verbs.

Is "to verb" an object in a sentence?

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