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I read in one grammar book that after except we have to use a bare infinitive. For example:
She had nothing to do except spend money.
But in this dictionary they provide an example with a verb and to. Here it goes:
He wouldn’t talk about work, except to say that he was busy.
I am really confused. Does that mean that the author of the book is wrong or the dicionary is wrong.
He wouldn’t talk about work, except to say that he was busy.
In this example, "to" means "in order to". He would talk about work [in order] to say that he was busy, but not otherwise.
So here "to" is functioning as something closer to a full preposition rather than simply an infinitive-marking particle.
