Passitve Infinitive

[philgcdr]

Hello,

I have a complicated question regarding the passive infintive - I asked another teacher on a forum about a subjunctive quiz and it appears that they had used the passive infinitive - can anyone give me a good ref. for this?

I know one data page on the passive, but it did not appear to comment on the passive infinitive much: English Grammar: Passive Voice (EnglishClub.com)

After this is the correspondence on the passive infinitve already.

Thank you very much.


Question 1:
Hello,
For what grammar reason in the subjunctive questions, number 10 on the page English Grammar: Subjunctive Quiz (EnglishClub.com) is the answer "to be" and not "be" and if it is the subjunctive, why is "to" used - if it is not the subjunctive, what grammar is being used and do you have a good web page reference?
Thank you very much

Answer 1:
Alan Teacher:
If you look carefully, you will see that only some of the questions require a subjunctive form in the answer.

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Question 2:
Hello Alan - thank you for your answer - if question 10 is not the subjunctive, then what grammar construction is it and where I can find more detail about it do you know? "We want the windows TO BE WASHED before Friday." - thank you for your considerate help.

Answer 2:
I'm afraid I can't direct you to any specific sources, but I can tell you that the construction 'want smth. to be done' is in very common use! Other examples include
She wants the room to be cleaned.
and
They wanted the letters to be handwritten.
The verb here is, of course, a passive infinitive, and not a form of the subjunctive mood.

[Tdol]

We usually use an infinitive after the verb 'want':
I want to clean the windows.
When we do the wanting, but not the action, we `can put a pronoun or noun in:
I want her to clean the windows.
In your example, it's your wish, but you will not be the one cleaning the windows. Furthermore, you aren't making it clear who should do the cleaning; it probably doesn't matter much as long as the get cleaned. When the acton is more important than the person performing it, we often use the passive, so here instead of an ordinary infinitive, we use a passive one.
We want the windows TO BE WASHED before Friday.

Does that help? I am not exactly sure what is causing the problem here.

[philgcdr]

"I am not exactly sure what is causing the problem here" - sorry you could not understand, thank you for your effort all the same.