Question

What part of speech is "to" before the verb? Is that an infinitive? Can you have a split verb infinitive?

Answer 1

Hint: The parts of speech are words that determine the grammatical form of a sentence and make it meaningful. We have 9 parts of speech in English which are nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunction, determiner and interjection.

Complete answer:
Before answering the above question we need to understand the following concepts-
1) Infinitives - They are derived from verbs but act as nouns/adjectives/adverbs. They are written in the ‘to+ base form of the verb’ form.
2) ‘To’ in English can be used as-
a) Preposition - It is used before a noun/pronoun to express motion/direction/approaching a decision.
b) Infinitive marker - It is used with the base form of the verb to act as a noun/adjective/adverb. All infinitives are verbs but they function otherwise. Sometimes it is used without the verb when it is clear which verb it is referring to. For e.g. to dance, to have etc.
c) Adverb - It is used to modify the verb. It must then not be followed by a noun and pronoun. E.g Which place did you go to?
3) Split verb infinitive- It refers to the ‘ to+ adverb+verb’ form of the infinitive. Adverbs come in between to and the verb.

‘To’ before the verb becomes infinitive. It cannot act as a preposition because in the preposition the verb comes before ‘to’. Being an infinitive it can function as a noun/adjective/adverb. Yes, ‘to before verb’ is an infinitive. Yes, we can have a split verb infinitive. For e.g. He used to secretly visit his friend.

Note: Infinitives can function as subject or object of the verb. They do not have tense and do not tell the time taken for an action to complete. For this reason that they don't relate to time, they are referred to as infinitives.