TEMA 21.

EL INFINITIVO Y LA FORMA –ING: SUS USOS

1. INTRODUCTION
The non-finite forms of the English verb are the infinitive, the gerund, the present
participle and the past participle. They are called non-finite forms because they do not
express personal or temporal relations on their own. In this unit we are going to study
the uses of the infinitive and the gerund, leaving aside the present and past participles.

2. THE INFINITIVE

In English, the infinitive is not a clearly defined form at all. It is just a neutral form.
In pre-historical times it was a fully inflected verbal substantive and in Old English it
had the ending –an with only one inflected form, the dative –enne, which under the
influence on –an became –anne; this form was used after the preposition to. Due to
erosion of inflections throughout Middle English, it became identical in form with the
present indicative, the present subjunctive and the imperative. It Modern English the
infinitive is to be considered not as a separate form of the verb, but only as one of
several application or uses of what Jespersen calls the base form.

The infinitive has been called a verbal substantive because it very often has the
usual function of a substantive. It has two forms: present and perfect infinitive. Both
can be habitual or continuous, and passive or active.

1. The present infinitive does not in itself indicate time. The temporal aspect of it
is determined by the element governing the infinitive or by the context. Thus the
present infinitive can refer to the present (“It does you good to eat vegetables), the
future (“I wish I had money to buy a house”) and the past (“It was very nice of you to
come”).

2. The perfect infinitive indicates either what has preceded (“He is said to have
spoken) or the hypothetical (“I thought it wrong to have helped her”).

3. The passive infinitive shows also a vacillation in content between state and
action. (“Do you expect the office to be closed?”).

4. The progressive infinitive usually expresses an action of a certain duration

taking place around a point of time (“We shall be arriving in two days”).

3. USES OF THE INFINITIVE.

3.1. USES OF THE BARE INFINITIVE (WITHOUT “TO”)

It is used as follows:
- With modal verbs: “He may go home”.
- With to dare and to need mainly in negative and interrogative sentences: “You
needn’t do it”.
- With “to do” when used as an auxiliary of emphasis or periphrases: “They did like
it very much”.
- With “had better”, “had sooner”, “had rather” and “had best”: “You had better
study harder.
- In sentences denoting some action with preference to another after “rather than”:
“They decided to surrender rather than fight”.
- In a number of more or less stock phrases:
a) To make believe: “She has made believe that she is poor”.
b) To make do (= to manage): “They had to make do with little money”.
c) To hear say, hear tell: “I’ve heard say that she was a widow”.
d) To let combined with drop, fall, fly, go, pass, slip: “She let fall a hint”.
e) Let + object + hang: “Let things go hang”
f) “Go fetch” (as an order to a dog).
- In elliptical constructions: “(Do you) want some?”
- When there are two co-ordinate infinitives, the second one does not take to if the
first one does not: “She couldn’t do better than resign”.
- In the construction called accusative with infinitive (certain verbs followed by an
object + infinitive): “I made him finish his homework”.
Some of these verbs are: let, make, hear, watch, notice, perceive ...
- With many verbs there is vacillation as to the use of to before the infinitive: feel,
see, find: “ I say her leave”
With help and know there is vacillation too, but the infinitive with to is preferred.

3.2. USES OF THE FULL INFINITIVE (“TO INFINITIVE”)

It is used:
- With be, have, ought, used: “She is to come soon”
- With appear, happen, dare, begin, etc: “I happened to meet him yesterday”
- As an adjunct or object of the preceding verb: “He intended to arrive earlier”.
- As an adjunct to a preceding noun: “He expressed his desire to leave the country”.
- As an adjunct to an adjective: “She is anxious to see her boyfriend again”.
- As a qualifier of a verb, noun or complete sentence expressing purpose: “She
decided to discover the truth”
- After expressions as in order to or so as: “She studied hard in order not to fail”
- After an interrogative pronoun or adverb, conjunction or relative pronoun: “I
do not know what to do”.
- After the verbs know, forget, learn, teach, followed by how, to express manner: “
He has taught his son how to swim”.
- With the verbs blame and let to mean “blameworthy” and “for hire” respectively:
“House to let ( = to hire).

The full infinitive is also used in the structured called accusative with full infinitive.
This term is applied to groups consisting of a noun or a pronoun plus a full infinitive
subordinated to another part of a sentence, usually a preceding verb. English uses an
accusative with full infinitive after the following verbs:

- verbs expressing an act of will when it concerns other people besides the subject,
such as want, with, like, love, prefer ...: “He wanted me to stay”
- verbs expressing an action by which we try to impose our will to another person,
such as allow, ask, command, force, entreat, get, implore, permit ...: “Allow me
to congratulate you”
- verbs expressing an opinion or perception such as believe, deny, imagine, perceive,
suppose, think, understand, etc : “I believed it to be a mistake”.

4. THE –ING FORM

There are some differences between the gerund and the present participle:
a) When the –ing suffix is added to the stem or base of a verb and is used as a noun,
it’s called a gerund: “I enjoy walking in the countryside”.
b) However, we can also use the –ing form as a verb in the continuous tenses. When
the –ing form is used in this way, it is called a present participle: “Sally is playing
tennis”. We also use present participles as adjectives (“ It’s a worrying problem) or
to introduce a participle clause (“I hurt my leg playing tennis”). Therefore, a word
with the –ing suffix can act as:
- a substantive: “The headmaster gave him a warning”
- a gerund: “She hated dancing”
- the present participle: “The cat drinking its milk”
- an adjective: “She bought a pair of walking shoes”
- a preposition: “I telephoned him concerning the will”

4.1 USES OF THE PRESENT PARTICIPLE.

a) Participle Adjectives
Adjectives ending in –ing describe the person or thing that produces somebody’s
feelings, in contrast to adjectives ending in –ed which describe somebody’s feelings:
“He’s bored “ and “this is a boring film”.

b) Participle Clauses
1. We can use a present participle to introduce a participle clause: “I hurt my leg
playing tennis.
2. Some participle clauses are like adjectives, that is, they give more information
about nouns: “Simon is the boy sitting in the corner”.
3. Other participle clauses are like adverbs, that is, they can express ideas such as
time or reason. When one action happens in the middle of another longer action,
we can use an –ing clause for the longer action. When one action happens before
another action, we can use having + past participle for the first action:
“Having finished breakfast, I went out for a walk”.
“I hurt my leg playing tennis” (= I hurt my leg while I was...)

4. Finally, we can also use an –ing clause to say the reason why something happens:
“having failed the exam the first time, he decided to take it again”
 4.2. USES OF THE GERUND

- The gerund as a noun:

a) It may have a plural with –s: “What do they mean all these goings-on?”.
b) It may have a genitive –s or a possessive pronoun: “It was his own doing”.
c) It may take articles: “His mother gave him a warning”
d) It may combine with words in the attributive-adjectival functions: “There was
much coming and going”.
e) It may form part of compounds in the same way as substantives: “walking-
stick”.
f) It may be co-ordinated with substantives: “Transportation or hanging, that’s
what he deserves”.
g) It may be subject, object, predicative complement and the complement of a
preposition:
“Her feelings have been hurt” “This is playing with fire”
“She has given up smoking” “He is good at climbing”

- The gerund as a verb:

a) It can be combined with adverbial members: “He disliked drinking heavily”
b) It can have an object or predicative complement: “After reading the letter, she
left the room”.
c) It can have a subject: “She got a sense of it being her duty to do”
d) It can be inflected in the perfect and the passive: “This saved him from being
hurt”.

- The gerund as part of a prepositional adjunct:

A number of verbs + preposition / adverb combinations always take the gerund. The
most common of these are: be for / against, give up, keep on, leave off, look
forward to, put off, see about, take to:
Ex: “I’m looking forward to reading your book”

- The gerund after prepositions:

The gerund is used after: at, before, besides, between by, for, from, in, into, near,
of, on, since, towards, upon, with, without, above, against, past. It is also
common after: as, than, as well as and worth.

- The gerund as the object or adjunct of a verb or verbal phrases:

The main verbs and verbal phrases are: to avoid, to burst out, to deny, to detest, to
enjoy, to escape, to fancy, to finish, to give over/up, it’s no good, cannot help, to
keep (on), to leave off, to mind, to postpone, to put off, to resent, to stop.

- The gerund after to like and worth and after the phrases there is no:
Ex: “That’s worth doing”

- Other uses of the gerund:

- After verbs of sensation: “I heard the bombs dropping”
- After “to go” and “to come” and the verb “to shop”: “They are going skating”
- After special constructions such as “spend / waste + time/ hours / minutes: “I spent a
lot of time doing my homework”
- After pronouns and possessive adjectives: “It’s no use their (or them)
complaining”.
- After nouns in the possessive case: “I couldn’t stand my mother’s interfering”.

5. THE GERUND OR THE INFINITIVE AFTER CERTAIN VERBS OR

VERBAL PHRASES

After a number of verbs and verbal phrases either the gerund or the infinitive may
occur. Some of the principal ones are: to begin, to start, to continue, to attempt, to love,
to prefer, to mean, to like, to remember, to try, to regret, to advise, to propose, can’t
bear, to intend, etc.

There are some differences between the use of the “to” infinitive and the gerund:

a) After to remember and to forget the infinitive refers to the future, the gerund to the
past:
Ex: “I must remember to ask him/ I remember seeing them when they were children.

b) To try takes a gerund when it means “to make an experiment” and an infinitive
when it means “to make an attempt”:
Ex: “To make a living he had tried writing” / “Try to keep perfectly still for a
moment”.

c) To mean takes a gerund when it means “to entail” and an infinitive when it means
“to intend”.
Ex: “She had never meant to hurt him” / This meant converting merchant ships to
carry fuel and ammunition.

d) After to begin, to start and to continue either the infinitive or the gerund may be
used, but if the verb following to begin or to start is a verb of knowing or
understanding, it is usually put into the infinitive.
Ex: “I have begun working” or “I have begun to work” but “I began to understand”.

e) After to hate, to like, to dislike and to prefer the infinitive is mostly used with
reference to a special occasion, the gerund being more appropriate to a general
statement.
Ex: “I hate to disappoint you” (special occasion)
“ She hated driving fast” (general statement)

f) After to stop. The infinitive is used when it means a break or pause in order to do
something. The gerund is used when it means a complete stop of the action:
“ I really must stop smoking” / “Every hour I stop to smoke a cigarette”.

g) After to permit, to allow, to advise and to recommend the infinitive is used if the
person concerned is mentioned. If the person is not mentioned, the gerund is used.
“I don’t allow my pupils to smoke” / “I don’t allow smoking”