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I am going to help you.

What is the grammatical function of to help you here?

Reopen note

Please note that I did not ask about going to (and that the to belongs with the following verb as shown above, not with going). The question is about the grammatical relations of to help you, not about going.

Araucaria - Him
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Ayoola Igwe
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  • "Be going to" + verb is a form of future. So your sentence is S + Verb in the future + Object. – fev Jun 29 '23 at 12:06
  • @fev But the OP asked for the grammatical relations of the infinitival clause to help you. – Araucaria - Him Jun 29 '23 at 14:12
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. WE don't know what the OP knows or understands. You are putting words in the OP's mouth, which we're not supposed to do in edits. For all we know, the OP may not have known that "going to + verb" is a construction that refers to a plan, decision or future intention. – Mari-Lou A Jun 29 '23 at 14:41
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    The text is ambiguous! It might mean *The reason I'm leaving is in order to help you. Or it might mean I will help you*. – FumbleFingers Jun 29 '23 at 14:49
  • I suggest that with the first meaning above, "to help you" is an "infinitive noun phrase" specifying the reason for leaving. For the more likely second meaning, it's an infinitive phrase acting as an adverbial modifier. – FumbleFingers Jun 29 '23 at 15:00
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    @Mari-LouA I have edited the reopen note. However, it's clear that OP understands that the to is part of the phrase to help you, because that's what they wrote! (And they certainly were'n't asking about going to! ;-) – Araucaria - Him Jun 29 '23 at 15:41
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    @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. Right. And, the OP asked what the grammatical function of the infinitival clause is, not what its semantic interpretation is. In our parlance, its function is that of catenative complement. – BillJ Jun 29 '23 at 16:25
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    Does this answer your question? Is "am going" a verb phrase? 'Be going to' is usually described as the cohesive unit (often called a 'periphrastic semi-modal' and 'to' judged not to be as closely attached to the infinitive. So this is then akin to asking 'What is the function of 'well on the road' in 'There is an ink well on the road'. See, for instance, Nordquist. These have been dealt with before on ELU. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 30 '23 at 14:37
  • The catenative-auxiliary analysis (as opposed to the dependent-auxiliary analysis) is the only sensible way to analyse auxiliaries. Thus, auxiliaries are 'main verbs' just as much as lexical ones are. The OP’s example can therefore be bracketed like this: [I am [going [to help you]]]. – BillJ Jun 30 '23 at 16:22
  • Just FYI: I'm one of the voters who closed this question a second time, but I did not do so for the stated reason (that it is a duplicate). Instead, I CV'd for lack of research, because I did not see any attempt by OP to make any effort to answer the question him/herself. – MarcInManhattan Jul 01 '23 at 01:39
  • @MarcInManhattan There isn't readily available tool for non-experts to reverse look up the grammatical relations of phrases, unfortunately, though. That's been a long-standing way of looking at it on EL&U , anyway. – Araucaria - Him Jul 04 '23 at 14:52
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. Yes, that's fair, but I'd expect someone posting on ELU to at least know terms like "present participle" and "infinitive" and to be able to make a stab at it, even if only a crude stab. That would be something at least. – MarcInManhattan Jul 04 '23 at 15:30
  • @MarcInManhattan Why would they do that when they're asking about functions like subject, object, complement etc, not phrase or word classes, though? – Araucaria - Him Jul 04 '23 at 15:34
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. Because "going" is a present participle and "to help" is an infinitive, and those verb forms can have certain grammatical relationships but not others. – MarcInManhattan Jul 04 '23 at 15:43
  • @MarcInManhattan But the answer's not about the parts of speech. Those grammatical relations are the answer, but there's no need for an OP to spout lots of stuff to show they know some tangential information. They do not know what those grammatical relations are! – Araucaria - Him Jul 04 '23 at 16:19
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. "there's no need for an OP to spout lots of stuff" I believe that demonstrating research is useful even if OP doesn't find the actual answer to his/her question. To be concise, I think that my opinion on this issue mostly accords with Andrew Leach's in his excellent post on this topic. If you'd like to discuss this in more depth, then perhaps we could start a new Meta thread. – MarcInManhattan Jul 04 '23 at 22:15

1 Answers1

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I am going [to help you].

The term 'function' is a grammatical one.

Grammatically, "going" is a catenative verb here, and the infinitival clause "to help you" is functioning as its catenative complement.

Note: some people seem to be claiming that "be going to" is an auxiliary verb, or at least is becoming one. It isn't. 'Auxiliary verb’ must be defined in grammatical terms, not in semantic terms. Thus auxiliary verbs are verbs with the NICE properties, which "be going to" obviously does not possess.

BillJ
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