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KennyLu Posted 8 years ago
Grammar

The function of infinitive in a sentence

Hi Everyone,

I was performing analysis on the sentence below and found that I was(Should it be "was" or "is" ? and why?) not able to determine the function of the infinitive. Would you please help me out Emotion: smile ?


Sentence of interest: They immediately called 119 for an ambulance to take the patient to hospital.


The prepositional phrase "for an ambulance" modifies the verb "called", (thereby) telling the reader "why" they called 119. What about the infinitive "to take the patient to hospital"? Is it an adverb? What does it modify?


Would you please help me correct my grammatical mistakes in this post if there are any? Emotion: smile


Thank you very much

Kenny

  

Top answer

If you are interested in the range of functions of the to-infinitive, this page may be useful. org/en/english-grammar/verbs/infinitive Note that labels (adjective, adverb, noun) are avoided. Rather, understanding the meaning is.

— AlpheccaStars

  • If you are interested in the range of functions of the to-infinitive, this page may be useful.
  • org/en/english-grammar/verbs/infinitive Note that labels (adjective, adverb, noun) are avoided.
  • Rather, understanding the meaning is.
  • Sometimes syntactic elements can be analyzed in more than one way, but the important thing is to get the meaning.
  • They immediately called 119 for an ambulance to take the patient to hospital.
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3 Answers
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If you are interested in the range of functions of the to-infinitive, this page may be useful.

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/infinitive

Note that labels (adjective, adverb, noun) are avoided. Rather, understanding the meaning is. Som

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They immediately called 119 for an ambulance to take the patient to hospital.


The PP “for an ambulance” is not a modifier, but a complement of “called”. It’s a complement because for this meaning of “for”, the preposition has to be licensed (specifically permitted) by the verb "called".

The infinitival clause to take the patient to hospital functions as an adjunc

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KennyLuI was performing analysis on the sentence below and found that I was(Should it be "was" or "is" ? and why?) not able to determine the function of the infinitive.

I was performing analysis on the sentence below and found that I was not able to determine the function of the infinitive. (inability at a time in the pa

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