To-infinitive as the object

Question

"To-infinitive as the objectStudy the following sentences.John likes to swim in the sea.Alice decided to meet the principal.Peter wants to go abroad.John likes  … what? To swim in the seaAlice decided … what? To meet the principalPeter wants … what? To go abroadHere the infinitives to swim, to meet and to go are the objects of the verbs likes, decided and wants respectively. The to-infinitives are thus used as nouns to form the objects of transitive verbs."The extract above is from https://www.englishgrammar.org/toinfinitive/My question is: why does the author, an English teacher and webmaster of the well-known proofreading site, treat (syntactically) infinitives as objects and not as complements of the main verbs?------------------------------------------I agree that the common denominator is what, the ellipted question about the object, but I consider it a weak argument for accepting the cited infinitives as direct objects, not main verbs complements. My test of changing those sentences from active into passive ones eluded me.

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

tkacka15My question is: why does the author, an English teacher and webmaster of the well-known proofreading site, treat (syntactically) infinitives as objects and not as complements of the main verbs?

How could we know that? It is very common for grammarians to disagree about terms and grammatical analysis. In my opinion there is little point in arguing about terminology. I, too, was taught to regard the infinitives in your examples as objects, but I learned a long time ago that there are other opinions. I couldn't care less what grammatical label people want to put on them.

CB

BillJ · Answer

Much traditional grammar treats the infinitivals in your examples as objects, usually taking them to be nouns, or at least noun-like. The traditional account seems to be based on the fact that functionally they are frequently analogous with noun phrases in that they can occur as complement of transitive verbs: John likes to swim ~ John likes candy; Peter wants to go abroad ~ Peter wants a holiday.

But that is not always the case, as your example Alice decided to meet the principal demonstrates. Here the analogy fails since the infinitival clause cannot be freely replaced by a noun phrase.

However, “to swim” is clearly not a noun like "candy" is; rather, it denotes an action (John likes to swim in the sea), not an object, which points to it being a verb. Additionally, “to swim” can take an adverbial modifier like “occasionally": John likes to swim in the sea occasionally, but nouns can't be modified by adverbs -- instead they are typically modified by adjectives: John likes chocolate candy.

Modern grammar treats the infinitival clauses in your examples as a distinct type of complement, realised entirely by non-finite clauses. It calls them 'catenative' complements.

“Like”, “decide” and “want” (and many other verbs) can take non-finite clauses as complement, and in the modern approach are thus called catenative verbs, meaning that they can form “chains” of verbs, where all except the last have a non-finite clausal complement. (The term 'catenative' comes from the Latin word for "chain".)

Many regard the catenative analysis as being much better than the direct object one, since it is impossible to equate a non-finite clause with a noun phrase.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

tkacka15My question is: why does the author, an English teacher and webmaster of the well-known proofreading site, treat (syntactically) infinitives as objects and not as complements of the main verbs?

That is the traditional approach and terminology.

More modern linguistic analysis, as BillJ has explained, uses a different vocabulary and a different approach. But there are many texts and schools that still teach the traditional way.

Some sites for English learners (like the BBC) avoid the problem and just show usage.

To-infinitive as the object

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