Saturday, August 12, 2017

complementation - Can all transitive verbs take to-infinitive clauses?



“Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear. (Jane Eyre)



It seems ‘your fate to be required to bear’ is a to-infinitive clause (or non-finite-clause by Bas Aarts:“They would hate [Jim to sell his boat].” ) and the object of cannot bear ; 'what it is' means 'whatever it is' and can be put in brackets. Can all transitive verbs take the clauses as their objects?





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