0 in grammar, the infinitive form of a verb without the word "to":
In the sentence "I let him go", the bare infinitive is the word "go".
Notice also that neither of the two has a bare infinitive analogue.
The bare infinitive also functioned as infinitive of purpose, and it was in this area that the to-infinitive first started to encroach on the territory of the bare infinitive.
Fischer (1995) suggests that the bare infinitive was ultimately replaced by the -ing form.
Table 1 shows that the order 'infinitive-finite verb' appears almost exclusively with the bare infinitive.
A bare infinitive in this case can be interpreted as an elliptic construction with an implicit modal verb.
In only one case do we find a toinfinitive straightforwardly replacing a bare infinitive.
Even for this group, then, the model is the analogy with that-clauses, not with the bare infinitive.
This process ultimately influenced the position of the bare infinitive, although the greatest losses were sustained by the subjunctive complement clause.
