to be or not to be...

[Michael Tomasello]

Interested persons might want to look at:

M. Haspelmath, "From purposive to infinitive - a universal path of
grammaticalization", Folia Linguistics Historica, X/1-2, pp. 287-310.

for an insightful discussion of where infintives come from and what they
do.

Mike Tomasello