to as preposition or infinitive

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to as preposition or infinitive

by mundasingh123 » Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:20 am
Last week local shrimpers held a news conference to
take some credit for the resurgence of the rare
Kemp's ridley turtle, saying that their compliance with
laws requiring that turtle-excluder devices be on
shrimp nets protect adult sea turtles.
(A) requiring that turtle-excluder devices be on
shrimp nets protect
(B) requiring turtle-excluder devices on shrimp nets
is protecting
(C) that require turtle-excluder devices on shrimp
nets protect
(D) to require turtle-excluder devices on shrimp nets
are protecting
(E) to require turtle-excluder devices on shrimp nets
is protecting


Options D and E are wrong
My question how do we find out whether "to " is used as a preposition or an infinitive
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Source: — Sentence Correction |

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by GmatKiss » Sat Aug 13, 2011 3:44 am
[spoiler]IMO:B[/spoiler]

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by Jim@Grockit » Sun Aug 14, 2011 4:38 pm
mundasingh123 wrote:Last week local shrimpers held a news conference to
take some credit for the resurgence of the rare
Kemp's ridley turtle, saying that their compliance with
laws requiring that turtle-excluder devices be on
shrimp nets protect adult sea turtles.
(A) requiring that turtle-excluder devices be on
shrimp nets protect
(B) requiring turtle-excluder devices on shrimp nets
is protecting
(C) that require turtle-excluder devices on shrimp
nets protect
(D) to require turtle-excluder devices on shrimp nets
are protecting
(E) to require turtle-excluder devices on shrimp nets
is protecting


Options D and E are wrong
My question how do we find out whether "to " is used as a preposition or an infinitive
Usually the words before "to" will give you a hint about its function when it comes before a verb (since it can't be an infinitive when it doesn't come before a verb). Some verbs generate infinitives, and infinitives can also be used as noun phrases; I wish I had a better answer than "learn about when infinitives get used, in a more detailed way" but unfortunately I can't think of a simple algorithm for infinitive-detection.

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by mundasingh123 » Tue Aug 16, 2011 11:55 pm
Jim , Below is a sentence in which , i think , to is used as a preposition
His plans to conquer the city dashed, Alexander decided against advancing any further .
But " to is followed by a verb,yet to is not an infinitive here
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