Past infinitive or perfect infinitive

Question

Grammar sites on the Net call the tense of a sentence such as the following : ' He must have eaten ...''perfect infinitive', but I saw one or two plasces where the tense was called 'past infinitive'.. Is this labeling correct? Can you say past infinitive to describe similar sentcences?

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Terminology varies. You may be dismayed to hear it, but different websites and textbooks use different names for the same things in English grammar.

Infinitives: to eat; to take; to see; to find
Perfect Infinitives: to have eaten; to have taken; to have seen; to have found
Infinitives without to: eat, take, see, find
Perfect infinitives without to: have eaten; have taken; have seen; have found

In He must have eaten, only have eaten is the perfect infinitive, or more specifically a perfect infinitive without to. In the case of modal verbs (must, might, may, can, will, etc.) two forms are possible: 1) the modal verb and an infinitive without to; 2) the modal verb and a perfect infinitive without to.

It's actually much easier to call 1) a modal tense and 2) a modal perfect tense.
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As far as I know, there is no such thing as a past infinitive. I'm not aware of any websites or textbooks that use that term. Nevertheless, the modal perfect tense is very frequently used to depict situations in past time, if you are interested in having that fact confirmed.

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

Thanks cj
Here's a link that uses 'Past Infinitives'.
http://linguapress.com/grammar/infinitive.htm

Past infinitive or perfect infinitive

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