Sometimes a sentence runs a whole lot smoother if it is not subject to restructuring to prevent a preposition ending a clause.

My attempt at analysis of bold:

if it is not subject to restructuring to prevent a preposition ending a clause=conditional/adverbial clause with expanders (modifiers), all of which is modifying the main clause.

if it is not subject=dependent clause

to restructuring=infinitive/adverbial complement, modifying the adjective ‘subject’

to prevent a preposition=adverbial infinitive, modifying both the predicate of the dependent clause and the adverbial complement ?????

ending a clause=gerund phrase, which is object of the omitted preposition FROM

Thanks, a lot!

Sometimes a sentence runs a whole lot smoother if it is not subject to restructuring to prevent a preposition ending a clause.

Analysis of bold portion - revised

Mine is a little different from yours. See what you think. (I’ve been at the hospital most of the day with my daughter, who just had a beautiful baby girl, so I do not guarantee that this is correct.)

if it is not subject to restructuring to prevent a preposition ending a clause
OK. We agree that this is an adverbial dependent clause

if it is not
Subject + linking verb + not

subject
adjective complement of It

to restructuring
prepositional phrase with gerund as object & modifies subject

to prevent
infinitive used as adjective modifying restructuring

a preposition
object of to prevent

ending a clause
gerund phrase, which is object of the omitted preposition FROM

Sometimes a sentence runs a whole lot smoother if it is not subject to restructuring to prevent a preposition ending a clause.

Analysis of bold portion - revised

Mine is a little different from yours. See what you think. (I’ve been at the hospital most of the day with my daughter, who just had a beautiful baby girl, so I do not guarantee that this is correct.)

if it is not subject to restructuring to prevent a preposition ending a clause
OK. We agree that this is an adverbial dependent clause

if it is not
Subject + linking verb + not

subject
adjective complement of It

to restructuring
prepositional phrase with gerund as object & modifies subject

to prevent
infinitive used as adjective modifying restructuring

a preposition
object of to prevent

ending a clause
gerund phrase, which is object of the omitted preposition FROM

First of all, congratulations on your daughter’s baby girl!

Now I made a very stupid error calling ‘to restructuring’ an infinitive. So this prep phrase functions adverbally modifying the adjective ‘subject.’ I can agree with this definitely.

I wouldn’t have thought of the infinitive modifying the gerund of the preposition. This sounds right too!

And the rest is simple.

Thanks for the corrections, and pointing out that I was so stupid that I named a prep phrase an infinitive!

Cheers for the help!

One final question on this:

If one infinitive phrase is functioning as an adverb (or adjective), then another infinitive phrase can modify this, correct?

Can you give an example of an infinitive modifying an infinitive?

Cheers

Idioms like subject to can be very confusing. Sometimes is helps to look up the definition of common words and see what idioms are associated with them.

If one infinitive phrase is functioning as an adverb (or adjective), then another infinitive phrase can modify this, correct?

That’s something I’ll have to think about tomorrow. It’s after midnight here.

Idioms like subject to can be very confusing. Sometimes is helps to look up the definition of common words and see what idioms are associated with them.

Yes, I’ve started doing this lately. I look for the idiomatic expressions on an online dictionary.

However, this is no excuse for my error, because it clearly is not an infinitive as the verb is not in its base form, but its ing form. I don’t know what I was thinking. I occasionally make mistakes when I work through things too fast. Since a young age, I’ve been told to slow down with almost everything I do: driving, eating, talking, and thinking in particular are tasks I do far too quickly almost all the time. That’s why you’ll find the quality of my writing changes with every post, depending on the amount of time I put into it. Some, very little time; others, a bit more.

Cheers

If one infinitive phrase is functioning as an adverb (or adjective), then another infinitive phrase can modify this, correct?

The best place to go to buy tools is a good hardware store.

How’s that?

The best place to go to buy tools is a good hardware store.

To Go I suppose describes place-stating which place is the best? The one where you go… ADJECTIVE?

TO BUY has to be an adverb- Why you have to go? To buy tools.

Is this sort of the right thinking?

How do you personally determine this?

Cheers

The best place to go to buy tools is a good hardware store.

I would begin by thinking of the literal definitions of modify and restrict. When something is modified or restricted, it changes.

If a home is modified, it is changed. If a policy is restricted, something changes (i.e., the total number of things you can do changes (my becoming smaller).

The same thing happens in language. When a word or phrase is modified or restricted, our concept of that word or phrase changes from lots of possibilities to fewer possibilities. For example,

In “My brother is an attorney,” the concept of brother is restricted only by how many brothers I have.
In “My brother who lives in Ohio is an attorney,” who lives in Ohio narrows the concept of which bother I’m referring to to one.

In “The best place to go to buy tools is a good hardware store,” to go restricts the our concept of place. It is not a place to eat or to swim. It is a place to go.

So if to go modifies our concept of place. And, if place is a noun, then to go is an adjective.

To buy tools narrow our concept of to go because it tells us why, not when or how. If something modifies our concept of to go by narrowing it to why we are going, it must be adverbial.

This way of thinking focuses on content or meaning rather than on position or part of speech. However, it provides one additional way of analyzing sentences that pure syntax doesn’t.

Hope this help. If not, pay it no attention.

That was most helpful. Well explained, Sapparis.

I’ve never considered thinking of it in this way, and it seems most effective, in this example, and, I’m sure, in most other examples, too!

Thanks, makes total sense now.

It’s just a way of looking at a problem from a different perspective, but it works for me because it’s sense-based rather than rule-based.