be yet to
- Thread starter Henry~
- Start date
In the first example, "to confirm" is an infinitive. Conjugated forms of "be" are commonly used with infinitives:
I am to travel to France next year.
John was to speak at the meeting, but he suddenly became ill and had to stay home.
Your second sentence is incorrect because "have" is used as an auxiliary verb with either the past or present participle. If you want to correct the sentence, you need to say
Police haven't yet confirmed whether ...
It could also be written as "Police haven't yet confirmed whether..."
I can't explain the grammatical reasons for this, Henry, but it's simply a difference in tenses and wordplay. As you know, there's often more than one way to say something in Engish (that's why we love it!) and "yet to confirm" is simply another way of saying "haven't confirmed yet". There are many uses of "yet to" ie:
"I have yet to learn to drive a car"
"They have yet to marry although they've lived together for years"
It's simply a stock phrase and I can't think of a purely grammatical reason for it.
"To be yet to" means that they are working on confirming the details, but they haven't yet.
Here's an example:
"I have yet to meet another person who has read the book by John Smith."
It almost implies that I'm actually looking for someone who has read the book, but I just can't find anyone.
It could also be written in these ways:
"I have yet to meet anyone who has read the book by John Smith."
"I haven't yet met anyone who has read the book..."
"I still haven't met anyone who has read the book..."
I hope that I haven't confused you more!
Here's an example:
"I have yet to meet another person who has read the book by John Smith."
It almost implies that I'm actually looking for someone who has read the book, but I just can't find anyone.
It could also be written in these ways:
"I have yet to meet anyone who has read the book by John Smith."
"I haven't yet met anyone who has read the book..."
"I still haven't met anyone who has read the book..."
I hope that I haven't confused you more!
I wonder whether this will help:
This construction with a form of be followed by a to-infinitive shows that something will happen in the future. So:
This construction with a form of be followed by a to-infinitive shows that something will happen in the future. So:
The police were to (= were going to) confirm ...
Yet can mean: "up to now, so far ....often used to imply the negative of a following infinitive." So:
The police were yet confirm .... means that they were going to confirm something but they hadn't confirmed it at the time described.