Words similar to infinitive
Example sentences for: infinitive
How can you use “infinitive” in a sentence? Here are some example sentences to help you improve your vocabulary:
When the maître d' brought it over, I nearly split an infinitive: the syntax alone was astronomical!
Tonight's nutty bloopers: A.G. coughs for several consecutive seconds, effectively splitting an infinitive; mistakenly addresses Senate Finance Committee member Don Nickles, R-Okla., as "congressman"; projects only 1.9 percent GDP growth for Calendar 1996.
The numbers in the above sentence indicate the beginning of each phrase and subordinate clause-- (1) adverb clause: “When people who swing want to see what's happening” modifies the verb try in the main clause; (2) adjective clause: “who swing” modifies the noun people ; (3) infinitive phrase: “to see what's happening” acts as the direct object of the verb want ; (4) noun clause: “what's happening” acts as the direct objective of the infinitive “to see”; (5) gerund phrase: “attending parties given by hipsters” acts as the direct object of the verb try ; (6) participial phrase: “given by hipster” modifies the noun parties ; (7) perpositional phrase: “by hipsters” modifies the passive participle given . In subsequent sentences I shall provide numbers but leave the reader to identify the structures, which will appear in varying orders, so as to avoide cluttering the discussion with labyrinthine explanations like this one.
Not everyone can always be sure of everything, but it has always seemed to me that one of the functions of education is to implant doubt in a student's mind: in other words, it is not so important that he remember, a dozen years after leaving school, what a dangling modifier, split infinitive, agreement between the number of a subject and its verb, etc., might mean, but the process of education should have created a (minor) circuit in the brain of the pupil so that when a certain situation is encountered later on, he acknowledge a nagging suspicion that there might be something wrong and that it would be best were he to look it up in an authoritative source to see what is written there by people who know such things.
"Can you give examples of a direct object in an infinitive phrase?"
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