Pet peeve

[Herb Stahlke]

I don't teach my first year students that modals don't govern the
infinitive, rather that they don't govern the marked infinitive.
My decision may be influenced by the fact that most of our
students are interested in TESOL, where one of the more common
Interlanguage errors is using marked infinitives after modals.
Interestingly, this error does not spread to the subjunctives.
External evidence, of course, but useful when training ESOL
teachers.

Herb

>>> laurence.horn at YALE.EDU 10/31/00 03:39AM >>>
At 4:19 PM -0500 10/31/00, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>
>The Merriam-Webster English usage dictionary says (in an
extended discussion):
>
>"... _to_ is only an appurtenance of the infinitive, which is
the
>uninflected form of the verb. In many constructions the
infinitive is used
>alone ...
>
So according to this practice, the subjunctives in "I demand that
he
leave" or "If it be treason" are really infinitives?  And when
first-year syntax students learn than modals don't govern the
infinitive (*He could to leave") they're being misinformed?
It's
certainly not standard practice in linguistics courses and texts
to
take the uninflected but to-less form of a verb following a modal
or
in the "that" complement of a verb like "demand" or "require" to
constitute an infinitive.  (Another case is "She made me (*to)
do
it".)  Base form/bare verb form (maybe even "infinitive stem")
si,
infinitive no.  Of course, this may just be a dialect split...

larry