Why is "to" considered the "main" part of a verb?

[Gavin Chipper]

It seems such an obscure part of a verb that I wouldn't even expect it to necessarily exist in all languages. I am going "to eat". I could just say I will eat, and it doesn't exist any more. So I'm not really sure I get why we talk about the verb "to do", for example, rather than just the verb "do."

Actually, it does seem that the infinitive does seem to usually match the "main" part of the verb anyway. So with "do", we also have things like "he does" but we still consider "do" to be the main thing. It's normally the same as the "I" form, but not with "I am" and "to be", and I probably would call "be" the main part. But then, it also always matches the imperative, so that could have equal claim as the "main" form, and some verbs don't even have an infinitive (or imperative), like "can", so it's not that great after all. So I would say that to say that the verb is "to x" rather than "x" is just some game we play, and not a real statement about the greatness of the infinitive.

[Brian Moore]

Dunno, though I suppose (on reflection) it could be just a way of indicating the sense of the infinitive so our brains more quickly pick it up immediately as an infinitive. Can't say I care too much, and as I'm not a linguist and don't understand linguistics or psycholinguistics, I might as well mumble in the back row.

I'm more worried by prepositions, the slippery little buggers. Are they normally just glue used to stick sentences together, and are they absolutely necessary most of the time, or are the Americans right in not bothering to use them in well-worn expressions (appeal v. appeal against, pissed v. pissed off, etc.) Why do I register 'compared to' as being wrong when I perfectly well know what the speaker means?

[Dinos Sfyris]

Kill a Mockingbird

[Brian Moore]

Kill a Mockingbird

Haha. Similar vein;

Is or not is, that is the question.

[Peter Mabey]

I think it goes back to when Latin was the only universal language, so that the infinitive was the base form, and is translated into English as "to" whatever this became the standard for teaching grammar. Hence the myth of the 'split infinitive' was perpetuated, resulting in people using such ungrammatical expressions as "boldly to go"
Similarly, it was believed that prepositions, having been labelled from the Latin to 'place before' , could not be used at the end of a sentence, whereas they actually belong after the relevant verb. By the way the Americans don't always omit them - after a meal we would wash after eating, to clean our sticky fingers but they 'wash up' even though they aren't going to do the dishes. (Perhaps they all have dishwashers )