Topic summary
To-infinitive
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Infinitive.
English
A matter of controversy among prescriptive grammarians and style writers has been the appropriateness of separating the two words of the to-infinitive (as in "I expect to happily sit here"). For details of this, see split infinitive. Opposing linguistic theories typically do not consider the to-infinitive a distinct constituent, instead regarding the scope of the particle to as an entire verb phrase; thus, to buy a car is parsed like to [buy [a car]], not like [to buy] [a car].