Subj : Infinitive using
To   : Alexander Koryagin
From : Anton Shepelev
Date : Sun Jul 03 2022 13:27:02

Alexander Koryagin - All:

> In one story I read this:

A nice way to meantion that pearl of English literature --
Jekyll&Hyde. By the way, I highly commend all of
Stevenson's short stories, which are legally available for
free (as in beer) and in free (as in freedom) formats, such
as .txt and .epub !

> ... "The face of Hyde sat heavily on his memory. He felt
> (what was rare to him) a nausea and distaste of life, and
> in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace
> in the flickering of the firelight on the polished
> cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the
> roof."
>
> I saw a strange using of the Infinitive:

a strage *use* of the Infinitive:

> ...in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed TO READ a
> menace in the flickering of the firelight...
>
> What would happen if I put it without TO:
> ...in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed READ a menace
> in the flickering of the firelight...

"he seemed to read" above is not strage but standard and
frequent, and means "it seemed to him" or "himseemed". I am
sure you have encountered the pattern hundereds of times
but paid no attention to it -- it is that unavoidable:

-- Your cat seems to dislike me.
-- You seem to make several posts a week
-- He seems to feel ill at ease.

`seem' is not special in this regard, for many other verbs
take the infinitive in like manner, such as `want',
`prefer', `like', `love'...

"He seemed read a menace in the flicker of the firelight"
is simply ungrammatical: when I fed it to my English
parser, it returned a syntax error. Know you of a single
precedent in English literature of two verbs in
apposion, one in the Past Simple and the other a bear
infinitive?

--- 
 * Origin: nntp://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)

.