Re: Need some help on English Language grammar
English infinitives are not like Latin or French infinitives, no matter how much Romance Linguists try to make them so. But since you'll probably be writing for a Romance linguist's benefit...
"When you see this scene, all you need to do is to not scream."
This is actually the best version, but to explain why, let's look at the others:
"When you see this scene, all you need to do is not to scream."
- This looks more grammatically correct, but it actually sounds weird, and the reason is that, if it is written this way, it's actually saying
"There is something that is all you need to do, and screaming is not it."
And that sort of emphasis comes across as odd the other way.
As for the last option:
"When you see this scene, all you need to do is not scream."
This one sounds almost indistinguishable from the original. I'd say which of the two is more correct, or
what either emphasizes, depends more on the specific dialect or setting. The last comes across as something you'd find on the internet, while the first sounds like something that would have been more normal in the 20th century.
I haven't thought about negation and infinitives this much before, but these examples actually seem to help clarify some things.
Having a multi-word infinitive makes English grammar weird. "to not scream" could be considered its own verb, whereas not to scream modifies "to scream".
I've never delved deeply into the infinitive-splitting debate, because it always sounds really, really pedantic. But comparing your three examples makes me want to go ask someone who studied linguistics specifically.
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