Example sentences of "[art] to [noun sg] [prep] " in BNC.
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| 1 | 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 " . |
| 2 | So far we have not examined the use of the to infinitive as subject . |
| 3 | All this points to the to infinitive as an expression of a contingent occurrence . |
| 4 | From the point of view of its spatial support , we can understand as well the use of the to infinitive as what Jespersen calls the " infinitive of specification " ( 1940 : 262ff ) . |
| 5 | While nothing definitive can be concluded from such meagre data , the fact that such examples do seem to suggest different impressions than the to infinitive to speakers of various dialects indicates that they deserve closer attention , especially in the light of a further examination of the passive voice . |
| 6 | All of the uses of the to infinitive with full verbs in the corpus fall into one or the other of these two categories . |
| 7 | Its exclusively perceptual meaning also bars it from being construed with a that-clause , whereas this construction is a close equivalent of the to infinitive with verbs of perception in their conceptual use : ( 46 ) * I watched that they were obnoxious . |
| 8 | The view just proposed accounts for the rather curious fact that there are no passive constructions followed by the to infinitive with the verb watch , as both Fries ( 1964 : 21 ) and Mittwoch ( 1990 : 119 ) have pointed out : ( 75 ) He was seen to cross the street . |
| 9 | 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 . |
| 10 | An examination of the actual meaning expressed by the to infinitive after verbs of perception in the active voice shows therefore a necessary before/after relationship between the event of the verb of perception ( which has shifted to evoke the notion of inference ) and the event of the infinitive ( which denotes the conclusion reached by means of the inference ) . |
| 11 | This explains the exclusive use of the to infinitive after this verb . |
| 12 | The to infinitive after and then , on the other hand , creates the impression of a delayed reaction ; it suggests that it took a moment 's reflection for the person to realize the import of what he had seen , this realization being what triggered his sudden cry . |
| 13 | With the to infinitive after bid , more room is left to the initiative of the person receiving the request . |
| 14 | 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. |
| 15 | The use of the to infinitive in the second example is more difficult to account for . |
| 16 | Although only two attested examples of this usage have been found in modern English , the contrast between the bare and the to infinitive in these contexts confirms the percept/concept distinction observed above : ( 88 ) The smallest pin could be heard drop . |
| 17 | Both Poutsma ( 1923 : 42 ) and Jesperson ( 1940 : 287 ) point out that have is often used with the to infinitive in conditional contexts with would : ( 178 ) I 'd have you to know that I do n't care a penny , madam , for your paltry money . |
| 18 | The expressive effect created by the use of the to infinitive in this type of context thus provides further support for our explanatory hypothesis . |
| 19 | Like verbs of perception , make takes the to infinitive in the passive ( cf Quirk et al. |
| 20 | These typical senses of the infinitive are summed up in the table below : The bare infinitive is therefore no less versatile than the to infinitive in being able to express a happening as real or only potential , which is not surprising given the fact that the to infinitive is composed of the preposition to + the bare infinitive . |
| 21 | 4.2 THE TO INFINITIVE IN EXCLAMATIONS DENOTING A NON-REALIZED EVENT |
| 22 | The to infinitive in sentences such as ( 21 ) — ( 25 ) above seems to involve the same mechanism of representation . |
| 23 | Thanks to this way of analysing the movement of to , the expressive effects of unexpectedness , good or bad luck and the like produced by the to infinitive in these cases can be accounted for . |
| 24 | 4.6 THE TO INFINITIVE IN EXCLAMATIONS DENOTING A REALIZED EVENT |
| 25 | The bare infinitive is used to produce a very different effect from that of the to infinitive in exclamations , as can be seen in ( 3 ) above and in : ( 30 ) I say anything disrespectful of Dr Keen ? |
| 26 | At the same time as the non-past is undergoing this shift , the use of to with the infinitive is being extended beyond its concrete directional sense to cover all cases of subsequent potentiality and subsequent actualization , for which the bare infinitive had formerly been adequate : " … the use of the to infinitive in the place of the bare or plain infinitive increased rapidly during the late Old English and early Middle English periods " ( Visser 1966 : 948 ) . |
| 27 | I I often , well , usually , if I 'm in the country at the time I bet on the National just for a , for a to sort of waste some money . |