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One teacher told me that the bare infinitive cannot be used as the direct object of a modal verb because it is not a noun. But, aren't infinitives with or without "to" infinitives?

Laurel
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Stim Roe
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    Who told you that infinitives (of any kind) were nouns? – alphabet Oct 16 '23 at 15:48
  • There must be more to that statement! What is an object of a modal verb? – Andrew Leach Oct 16 '23 at 15:56
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    Modal verbs don't have direct objects; they modify the meaning of another verb, which has to be in infinitive form. – Peter Shor Oct 16 '23 at 15:56
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    To alphabet.

    I hear all the time that infinitives are verbal nouns, also called verbals. Here is a link to one of the pages that does this: https://www.grammarbook.com/blog/verbs/verbals/

     – Stim Roe Oct 16 '23 at 15:59
  • Yes, 'to-infinitival clauses' and bare infinitival clauses are the two kinds of infinitival clause. Clauses of any kind cannot function as objects of any verb, lexical or modal. However, they freely function as complements of other verbs of any kind. – BillJ Oct 16 '23 at 16:24
  • Related. You're confusing parts of speech like nouns and verbs and adjectives with grammatical functions like subject and object and modifier. Phrases and clauses never have a part of speech, no matter their grammatical function. – tchrist Oct 16 '23 at 16:45
  • @StimRoe Infinitivals are not 'verbal nouns', despite what you may read elsewhere. Trad grammar talks of verbal nouns being 'gerunds'. – BillJ Oct 16 '23 at 17:02
  • In I can drive, the verb drive is not the direct object of can, but is the main verb of the sentence, which is used in conjunction with the modal verb can. On the other hand, in French, in the sentence je peux conduire (meaning I can drive), conduire is indeed the direct object of peux. This difference of terminology can confuse people learning another language. – Peter Shor Oct 16 '23 at 18:04
  • I’m voting to close this question because it seems to be based on a misunderstanding. – Greybeard Oct 17 '23 at 07:53

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The difference is in the context.

In this syntactic context, "bare infinitive" means an infinitive VP without an introductory to. This construction is licensed by some verbs, including all modal auxiliaries, plus small verbs like let (*Let me to go!), and optional in many cases (Help me (to) get him out). Note that a "bare infinitive" does indeed have an infinitive verb form, but it also includes the rest of the VP that verb heads.

If you add the categories "verb form" and "construction" to your terminology, a lot of the confusion goes away. As long as you can tell the difference and maintain it consistently.

John Lawler
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  • I think it would be clearer to say that English doesn't have an infinitival form of the verb in the way that, say, French does. "To succeed", for example, is not a verb; it's two words, the subordinator "to" and the verb "succeed". – BillJ Oct 17 '23 at 07:00
  • Yes, it's a construction. A verb phrase, in this case. – John Lawler Oct 17 '23 at 15:46