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Re:Commit messages guide by thaumasiotes on Saturday April 20, 2019 @05:18AM (#19705547)
> "To be" is not the main verb in that sentence ["this can be a hassle"] so of course it's in infinitive form.

This directly conflicts with your earlier statement that

> The infinitive form of verbs in English always starts with "to", as in "to add", "to fix" etc.

That earlier statement is wrong, so contradicting it doesn't really present a problem, but you've left me pretty confused as to what you think you're saying.

Whether "be" is the "main verb" in that sentence is a more interesting question. There's a decent argument that it is, in that "this can be a hassle" is easily viewed as a modified form of the sentence "this is a hassle", but not as a modified form of the defective sentence "this can". But you're correct that the standard analysis just says that "this can be a hassle" is sentence where the subject is "this", the verb is "can", and the object is an infinitive clause.

Re:Commit messages guide by massive-tea on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:30AM (#19710969)
I thought it went without saying that we're talking about main verbs because verbs in other positions don't change forms anyway.
Re:Commit messages guide by thaumasiotes on Sunday April 21, 2019 @04:50AM (#19711226)

    At this point, he has been being investigated for six months.
That sentence contains four verbs, of which zero are in the plain form. (One is present-3sg, one is ING-form, and two are EN-form.)

Are all four of them "main verbs"?