| @davidr: Yes, "finished", as a participle, would be functionally an adjective in that sentence. As would "done". "To" is pivotal to whether "ought" can be modal, as a prime characteristic of modal verbs is that they do not require an infinitive. I don't think "ought go" is technically correct in American English either, (for example, MS Word thinks it's wrong) but I've seen it in print. It could just be a matter of proscriptivism, like the ridiculous claim that "you should never split an infinitive". |
