Past conditional

Question

could you please confirm this sentence is correct? and why the verb to be is used in the infinitive? Thank you so much.Our school was one of only 50 to be invited to participate in the festival.

Avangi · Accepted Answer

AnonymousOur school was one of only 50 to be invited to participate in the festival.

I'm not sure that your analysis as "conditional" is correct.

"Our school was one." This is simple past tense, with the main verb "to be" plus a noun complement.

"One is then modified by the prepositional phrase (I believe) "of only 50."

"50" is then modified by the infinitive phrase "to be invited."

"Invited" is then modified by the infinitive [phrase] "to participate."

"Participate' is then modified by the prepositional phrase "in the festival."

Probably some consider "to be invited to participate in the festival" a non-finite clause. I'm not sure about that.

You can peel these modifying phrases off one at a time, working backward from the end,
and have a correct, complete sentence at each step along the way.
Each one can be seen as optionally modifying a word in the previous phrase.

Eg, "Our school was one [of only 50] [to be invited] [to participate]. . . . . . [in the festival]."

Infinitives are not uncommon as modifiers of nouns: I am happy [to be invited]. I am proud [to serve].

I suspect that "to be invited" is a passive infinitive, rather than "to be" (infinitive) + adjective complement.

The sentence is fine, by the way!

Cool Breeze · Answer

AnonymousOur school was one of only 50 to be / that were invited to participate in the festival.

The infinitive is used in what I call a relative clause equivalent. The infinitive is common in such structures especially if only, last, next or an ordinal occurs in the main clause. Examples:

Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon.
The last train to arrive was two hours late.

CB

Past conditional

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