The form and uses of the perfect infinitive

TWO important grammatical forms that I don’t recall having ever taken up in this column are the perfect infinitive and the perfect gerund. I was asked about their usage sometime in 2011 but having been so pressed for time when I wrote my reply, I managed to come up in Jose Carillo’s English Forum with what looks to me now as a bare-bones discussion of only two special applications of the two forms. To make up for that less than adequate treatment, I will discuss the perfect infinitive and the perfect gerund more comprehensively this time.

Let’s take up the perfect infinitive first.