Relative infinitive clauses - uses and exercises

We can sometimes replace a relative pronoun and finite verb with an infinitive. This is sometimes called a relative infinitive clause, or infinitival relative clause. This happens more often with defining relative clauses, but can also occur with non-defining clauses:

• The first person to speak at the conference was an expert on ...
  (= the first person who spoke ...)
• Jenny is definitely somebody to keep an eye on.
  (= somebody who you should keep an eye on)
• The chemist gave her some tablets, to be taken three times a day.
  (= which should be taken / were to be taken)

When can we do this?

There doesn't appear to be a lot of information about this in standard EFL books, but there seem to be two main contexts where we can use an infinitive in a relative clause.

The first gets some space in advanced grammar books, but the second gets hardly a mention, at least not in the context of relative clauses.

Modal past

There are three main ways of talking about the past using modals or their equivalents:

• Past modals - mainly would and could
• The use of other, similar verbs
• Modal perfect - must have, can't have etc

Brush up your knowledge of modal past by doing a few exercises.

Verb patterns - quick quizzes

When one verb follows another they can follow one of several patterns, for example:

• verb + to-infinitive
• verb + -ing form (gerund)
• verb + to--infinitive / -ing form
• verb + object + (to-) infinitive
• verb + object + -ing form
• verb + that clause

There are unfortunately no hard and fast rules as to what pattern to use, although a to-infinitive often looks forward and/or involves an action - He decided to do it (he decided, then he did it), while an -ing form often looks back or is more about reactions, thought processes or emotions - She enjoys kite surfing (she enjoys the experience).

There's a link at the top of this page to a reference page with lists of verbs and their possible patterns, but the only real way to learn these patterns is through practice and exposure: ideally, 'afford to do' and 'admit doing', etc, should come as automatically to learners as 'sing, sang, sung'.

The exercises in this post (especially the first one), will hopefully help you practise these patterns, so that they become automatic. There are also a couple of quizzes to practise using dependent prepositions after verbs.

Inversion with so, such and as - exercises

Here are a couple of exercises on inversion with so, such and as, and a rather nerdy discussion of inversion after than. You can find out much more about inversion, and about why we use inversion and fronting, at a rather longer post I wrote recently (link below).

Fronting exercises (with a bit of subject-verb inversion)

These ten exercises are intended to give students some pretty intensive practice in fronting. They cover the more common forms of fronting, and include basic instructions on how it is done. For more detail on how they are formed and why we use fronting you could have a look at my post on 'Exploring Inversion and fronting' (link at the bottom).

Exploring concession and contrast

In this post we look at the difference between concession and simple contrast, and at the various words and expressions we can use to express concession and contrast. As well as information about these, there are ten exercises to give you plenty of practice in using them.

Words and expressions used to express concession

The Basics

• although, though, even though
• despite, in spite of

Getting more advanced

• while, whilst, whereas
• nevertheless, however, even so, all the same
• much as
• no matter how / what etc
• however, whatever, whoever etc
• adjective + as / though
• but still, but even so, but all the same
• (and) yet

Even more exotic

• when, if, albeit
• may ... but
• Contrastive emphasis with auxiliaries

We'll also look briefly at 'reducing' concession clauses, at fronting concession clauses and at something called Yes, But arguing.

Confusing verbs - consist, include, make up, comprise and constitute etc

We can use several verbs to talk about the parts that form or make up something (the whole). Some can be a little confusing, and with one, not everybody agrees on all its uses. Read a bit about them and do a short exercise. (Hat-tip to Peter Harvey at Lavengro, whose post gave me the idea - see links).