Study the following sentences and the underlined phrases.
I don’t suppose she cares to remember the nipa hut.
She used to live in a hut near the dike.
The underlined words in the sentences are words formed from verbs but they do not function as verbs.
A verbal is a word that looks like a verb, but functions as a noun, an adjective, or an adverb in a sentence.
For example:
In the sentence:
She goes to the dike to play.
the verbal “to play” is called an infinitive.
Sometimes a phrase consists of to + a verb. In such instances, to is not a preposition but a part of a verb form. This is called an infinitive. Remember that in a prepositional phrase, to is followed by a noun. Hence, a prepositional phrase consists of to + noun.
Look carefully at the two sentences, and differentiate the infinitive and prepositional phrases.
| Bea is going to | Manila | to visit her grandmother. |
|---|---|---|
| ↑ preposition |
↑ noun |
↑ verb |
| preposition ↓ |
||
|---|---|---|
| I rode on the | train to get to | Bulacan this morning. |
| ↑ verb |
↑ noun |
