The meaning of "have been to"

Question

I've found following sentence form one of BBC articles I've read recently. I would be really grateful if someone could provide me with the explanation of the grammatical structure of the sentence, particularly the usage of "have been to". The main reason for this is though I know how to use present perfect continues tense, I've never learned any theories related to following structure. Furthermore, please let me know what is the name of the grammar points associated with this, because if I had known the name, I would have searched it on google without difficulty.

A leaky component may have been to blame for the dramatic explosion of a SpaceX capsule during testing in April.

References :

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49005026

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

dileepaA leaky component may have been to blame for the dramatic explosion of a SpaceX capsule during testing in April.

There are two infinitives in your sentence. Have been is a bare/plain perfect infinitive. It is used here with may to refer to the past. Other examples of the perfect infinitive (have + past participle) with a modal auxiliary:

He may have seen us there.

That bridge may have been built before World War I.

You should have seen it!

I would have gone to the movies if I had had enough money.

To blame is a present infinitive, complete with the particle to, because there is no grammatical reason to omit it. English has only two infinitives, and the present infinitive is the more common of the two. This form is used of all verbs listed in dictionaries, but the to is of course omitted.

He may see us there.

You should see it!

I would go to the movies if I had enough money.

He wants to do it now.

CB

BillJ · Answer

Preliminary point: the expression "have been to" is not a single constituent: the individual words form a part of three separate constituents.

Compare:

[1] A leaky component was to blame for the dramatic explosion of a SpaceX capsule during testing in April.

[2] A leaky component may have been to blame for the dramatic explosion of a SpaceX capsule during testing in April.

In both examples there is reference to past time. In [1] it is expressed by the simple past tense and in [2] by the perfect.

In [1] the clause uses "was" to assert that a leaky component was to blame. In [2] the occurrence of "may" marks the clause as expressing the modal meaning of possibility. Unlike [1] it's not asserting that a leaky component was to blame, but that it was only possibly to blame. Modal auxiliaries like "may" generally require a bare infinitival complement; in this case it has the underlined perfect infinitival clause as complement.

The simple past tense represents the most common, or default, way of locating the situation in past time, but it can't be used in clauses without inflectional tenses, such as in [2] so the perfect is then called into service to perform the job that in [1] is performed by the simple past tense.

CalifJim · Answer

dileepaA leaky component may have been to blame for the dramatic explosion of a SpaceX capsule during testing in April.

Let's start with something simpler.

A leak | is the cause | of the explosion.
A leak | is responsible | for the explosion.

In the past:

A leak | was responsible | for the explosion.

Add "maybe":

Maybe | a leak | was responsible | for the explosion.

Transform: maybe ... was = may have been

A leak | may have been | responsible | for the explosion.

Synonyms: responsible = at fault = to blame

Compare:

A leaky component | may have been | to blame | for the dramatic explosion of a SpaceX capsule during testing in April.

CJ

The meaning of "have been to"

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