I got him to go to the shop
Here, we know that "to go the shop" is an infinitive clause. But we all know that clause has subject-verb combination. So my question is where the subject and verb in this clause?
Please explain in grammatical way.
-
I suspect "to go to the shop" is a prepositional phrase of some kind, which is why it doesn't include the subject. – Andrew May 18 '18 at 15:42
-
2It should be "to go shop" or "to go to the shop", but not "to go the shop". – J.R.♦ May 18 '18 at 15:44
-
If you know the construction "make someone do something ", it's just the same. – V.V. May 18 '18 at 17:58
I got him [to go to the shop].
The sentence contains two clauses -- a matrix one and a subordinate one -- and hence two verbs. The matrix clause has "I" as subject and "got" as its verb. The bracketed subordinate clause has no subject, but we understand it to be "him", and it has "go" as verb.
The intervening noun, "him", between the two verbs is not the syntactic subject of the subordinate clause. It is the syntactic object of the matrix verb but only the semantic (understood) subject of the subordinate clause.
In the sentence you provided, the infinitive clause is "him to go to the shop".
- him = subject (in the objective case)
- to go = verb (in its infinitive form)
This type of clause can be explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitive (See "Clauses with subject in the accusative case")
