Example sentences of "[art] to [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Tony walked over the to poster and was intrigued by the programme of entertainment displayed . |
| 2 | CASE 2 : the form should be completed with the appropriate letter ( A , B or J ) in the To Working-Set space and the corresponding table number ( 1–40 ) in the From Table Number space . |
| 3 | If you 're interested in buying any of Neil 's pieces , he gives the to charity shops to sell . |
| 4 | The new development gains tax , introduced by the Finance Act , 1974 , represents the latest attempt to impose what might be considered as an adequate tax on gains which result from the to development or potential development value of land situated in the United in the Kingdom . |
| 5 | Such an analysis is highly implausible however because it fails to recognize that the to infinitive poses a problem of syntax which goes beyond the level of the individual word . |
| 6 | According to Jespersen ( 1940 : 158 , 180 ) , see with the bare infinitive denotes " immediate perception " , whereas with the to infinitive the meaning conveyed is that of " inference " or " logical conclusion " . |
| 7 | The problem of defining the potential meaning of the to infinitive has already been posed , in a summary way , in the comment from Jespersen ( 1940 : 157 ) cited in Chapter 1 . |
| 8 | This view is similar to Hirtle 's description ( 1975 : 20 ) of the to infinitive as referring an event " to any point in time prior to its realization " , since to can be seen to evoke that which comes before the realization of the event . |
| 9 | That to situates the bare infinitive 's event as an after-position with respect to something else explains why so many grammarians associate the to infinitive in some or all of its uses with notions such as " future " ( Wierzbicka 1988 : 188 ) , " mere potentiality for action " ( Quirk et al. |
| 10 | Even Mair , who proposes no basic meaning for the to infinitive , is led by his careful examination of the data to observe that with practically no exceptions all the matrix verbs followed by to + infinitive in the direct object , ditransitive , monotransitive raising , complex transitive , and SVOA constructions can be characterized as " forward-looking predicates " ( 1990 : 102 , 104-5 ) . |
| 11 | The view of to taken here also accounts for the impression of what Riddle ( 1975 : 467 ) calls " control " which one often feels with the to infinitive , i.e. the implication that the matrix event is responsible for or affects the complement event ( cf. the difference between Jane forgot to be cautious and Jane forgot that she was cautious ) . |
| 12 | The meaning of the to infinitive is thus in fact a combination of two potentials : the potential meaning of the bare infinitive , which gives the speaker the possibility of representing the realization of any action as unfolding from its beginning through to its end and any state as having a fully actualized lexical content ; and the potential significate of to , which affords the speaker the possibility of representing any movement in time from a before-position to an after-position ( corresponding here to the beginning of the infinitive event ) . |
| 13 | 2.1 TWO TYPES OF MEANING EXPRESSED BY THE TO INFINITIVE |
| 14 | On the basis of the meanings expressed , all the uses of the to infinitive can be divided into two general types which at first sight might seem to be in direct contradiction with one another . |
| 15 | In some of its uses , the to infinitive evokes an event as non-realized or yet to be realized . |
| 16 | All of the uses of the to infinitive with full verbs in the corpus fall into one or the other of these two categories . |
| 17 | As for the to infinitive , we have already alluded to the impressions associated with its use after have + direct object with regard to ( 1a ) — ( 1b ) above . |
| 18 | The relation between an obligation concretized in the form of presence on a list and the realization of the action called for by this presence is obviously one of subsequence , whence the use of the to infinitive . |
| 19 | Since the to infinitive , as just seen , expresses a non-realized event in these uses , it will be analysed as involving an initial interception of to , as with try diagrammed above . |
| 20 | This is all the more requisite as there are certain uses in which the to infinitive can not be substituted for the bare form ( e.g. ( 13 ) ) and , vice versa , where the bare infinitive can not replace its counterpart with to , as in ( 14 ) . |
| 21 | Erades ( 1950 : 123 ) , for example , observes that while the sentence with the bare infinitive " can only mean one thing , viz. Will you share with me the work of addressing them ? " , that with the to infinitive allows the interpretation that " the help may be afforded by some other means , such as relieving the speaker of other duties or tasks " . |
| 22 | Lind ( 1983 : 270 ) has pointed out that in his corpus the to infinitive is six times more frequent than the bare form with inanimates . |
| 23 | However , unlike the uses seen with have , the to infinitive does not evoke an unrealized objective or goal , but rather an event which is actually accomplished . |
| 24 | Surprisingly , however , all these verbs ( except , apparently , watch can also be construed with the to infinitive : ( 36 ) I saw them to be obnoxious . |
| 25 | If the tendency observed with have and help holds true here , the to infinitive should evoke its event as somehow subsequent to that of the verb of perception in these sentences . |
| 26 | Everyone agrees that when the to infinitive is substituted for the zero form , verbs of perception undergo a lexical shift . |
| 27 | Palmer ( 1988 : 199 ) proposes that when followed by the to infinitive , verbs of perception function as verbs of reporting , so that He saw the children to be eating their lunch means " He reported the children to be eating their lunch " . |
| 28 | This paraphrase is not entirely appropriate as a description of the meaning expressed however ; Jespersen ( 1940 : 280 ) does a better job of it when he characterizes the sense of see with the bare infinitive as that of " immediate perception " , and its sense with the to infinitive as that of " inference " . |
| 29 | The lexical shift from immediate perception to inference is perhaps most obvious with the verb feel : with the to infinitive , as in ( 40 ) above , this verb is practically the equivalent of think . |
| 30 | Bolinger points out furthermore that the use of the to infinitive after verbs of perception when they shift to the inferential sense fits into an overall pattern with the object + infinitive construction . |