Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  In formal English, the preposition is generally
AH>  included where it may not always be in colloquial 
AH>  speech.  What I see here is a private conversation 
AH>  (i.e. you may notice turns of phrase Miss Stickler 
AH>  didn't accept).  That's the easy explanation for
AH>  the last sentence


          Alternatively, "to" is a "function word".  In the common parlance it may be left out when the speaker decides it adds nothing worth adding....  :-Q



AH>  ... the other is more complex.  Although it struck 
AH>  me as "not English" with the added preposition, I 
AH>  wasn't really sure why until after wading through 
AH>  multiple definitions of the verb "to have".  It
AH>  seems that if "have" means a third party will be 
AH>  asked &/or required to do the job the preposition is 
AH>  omitted, as in the first sentence you asked about. 

ak>  Ok.
ak>  BTW, you called those "to"s as "propositions". But 
ak>  prepositions are put before nouns? For instance, in 
ak>  English textbook in Russia we call those "to"s as 
ak>  particles.


          I found one source which identified them as "infinitive particles", which makes sense to me, but I avoid the use of "particle" for two reasons:

    1)  From my POV there's general agreement as to the eight parts of speech
        I learned about in my youth.  I know I can count on the dictionary in
        almost any European language to employ the same terminology even if I
        don't understand their idea of gender.  And until you & Anton started
        asking more advanced questions the Russians seemed content... [grin].

    2)  During the 1960's various linguists objected to the old rules & tried
        to make improvements... one of which I suspect may be the addition of
        the word "particle" in this context.  Not all dictionaries include it
        because it's not universally accepted & if you find it at all you may
        find little or no general agreement as to what it means.  At least if
        e.g. somebody adds articles to the parts of speech I get the picture,
        because I already know the term "article" as a subset of "adjective".


          I am reluctant to add unnecessary complexities here.  My goal is to communicate with you as well as an indeterminate number of other people.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+