- The young woman, whose name was Maria, told him that most women do not
like surprises of this kind. - At that moment, Raul, who had a date with Maria, walked into the store,
which interrupted the moment. - Maria remembered the day when she met Raul.
25.Fred could not think of a reason why he had not talked to Macarena about his
dream.
Nonfinite Verb Forms
Up to this point, all the verb constructions we have worked with have in-
cluded tensed, or what are calledfinite,verbs. Some of the more interesting
grammatical constructions, however, involve untensed, ornonfinite,verbs.
There are two major types of untensed verb forms:infinitiveandbare infini-
tive(inf). The infinitive involvesto+verb,whereas the bare infinitive lacks
the wordto.These constructions are significantly different from any we
have looked at so far, and analyzing them requires a level of abstraction that
is quite a bit higher than what we have needed in the other sections. For rea-
sons that are beyond the scope of this book, nonfinite verb constructions are
deemed to be clauses, even though they do not look much like any clauses
we have considered.
Nonfinite verb forms function as subjects, noun phrase complements, predicate
complements, and adverbial modifiers, as illustrated in the following sentences:
74.For him to invite Rod Harrisis crazy. (subject)- Mrs. DiMarco had a jobfor him to do.(NP complement)
The wordfor,which normally would be a preposition, is functioning as a
complementizer in both 74 and 75.
- Macarena wantedto hold the baby.(predicate complement)
The bare infinitive verb form, illustrated in sentence 77, also functions as a
predicate complement:
- Raul’s mother made himeat his vegetables.(predicate complement)
As an adverbial modifier, infinitive verb forms are sentence-level modifiers,
as in sentences 78 and 79:
78.To appear calm,Fred smiled. (adverbial)154 CHAPTER 4