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When "to" is a preposition: I look forward to receiving your letter. When "to" is part of the infinitive: I expect you to come over. My question is, how could I know whether "to" is a preposition or part of an infinitive? Is there any rule behind?

tchrist
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HypnoticBuggyWraithVirileBevy
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  • I think 'to' is always a preposition even when it makes an infinitive. "To go' is an infinitive when preceded by the preposition 'to'. – Ram Pillai Mar 29 '20 at 05:55
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    In very simple terms, "to" is a subordinator when it is followed by a plain form verb. Elsewhere it's a preposition. – BillJ Mar 29 '20 at 12:12
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    @RamPillai That raises the question of what you consider the resulting constituent to be. If to were considered a preposition here, would you consider to come over a prepositional phrase? That seems a difficult analysis to support because it leads to contradictions. Prepositional phrases can themselves rarely if ever be used substantively as noun phrases for example to act as subject or object arguments to a verb, yet infinitival phrases do so with little enough fuss. To eat pizza is all I wanted plus a bonus complementizer w/subject For us to have pizza was all my kids wanted. – tchrist Mar 29 '20 at 15:08
  • @tchrist: 'To come over' is an infinitive phrase/ verb phrase. In your examples, 'To eat a pizza/ To have pizza' are noun phrases starting with 'to'. I agree with your views, but have difficult in relating 'to' to any of the PoS. – Ram Pillai Mar 29 '20 at 16:09
  • Correction: ...... have difficulty....(not difficult) .in the post just above. To continue: 'to' as part of an infinitive/ infinitive phrase is mentioned as infinitive marker. (Google). Again my difficult is to relate it to which PoS. – Ram Pillai Mar 29 '20 at 16:17
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    @RamPillai The marker of an infinitival clause is a subordinator (not a preposition). – BillJ Mar 30 '20 at 09:27

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