영어의 代不定詞 to에 관한 연구

Abstract

This paper deals with the syntactic properties of the so-called pro-infinitive to in present-day English fron the standpoint of catenative verbs of English, which have recently been subsumed under English verbs by some English grammarians. Instead of the clumsy to do s0, the frequent use of to as the pro-infinitive to, which has been on the rapid increase especially in colloquialism since the middle of the 19th century, is a clear indication that the infinitive marker to does not form an inseparable unit with the following verb-phrase. In this paper the writer presents fìve pieces of convincing evidence that the pro-infinitive to belongs to the preceding verb (i.e. the first part of the catenative verb) more closely than to the following deleted verb-phrase and suggests some substantial revisions in the description of the ellipsis in to infinitive cIauses of Quirk et al. (1989:12.64). This paper is an empirical study that aims to verify the necessity for the proposition of catenative verbs in contributing to a clear explanation of the properties of the pro-infinitive to in English.