Does anybody know anything about the distribution of the modal "ought" without "to" (in other words, "ought" taking the base infinitive). Eg:
They ought to go home.
vs.
They ought go home.
Is "ought" without "to" an occasional variant? Is it archaic? Is it regional?
The reason I want to know is b/c I teach ESL, and would like to tell my students accurate information. Thank you.
In present-day English ought may behave like a 'modal' verb, taking an unmarked infinitive, only in negatives and questions, not in ordinary declaratives:
Ought I take that seriously?
You ought not take that seriously. BUT
You ought to take that seriously.
But even in negatives and questions the unmarked infinitive is not always required; for many speakers a marked infinitive is acceptable, too:
Ought I to take that seriously?
You ought not to take that seriously.
ADDED: Even more likely in US speech is the "melded" form oughta:
Oughta we take that seriously?
You oughta not take that seriously.
And this tolerates what looks like lexicalization but is probably better understood as modal stacking:
Do we oughta take that seriously?
You didn't oughta take that seriously.
In any case, this is a question of declining importance: use of ought has decreased markedly in the last couple of generations.
I have changed my answer.
To understand 'ought', I will coin a word class called 'control verbal'.
A control verbal has an event as its direct object. The subject of this sub-event will be 'raised to object', or it will be omitted (raised to subject) if it matches the calling subject. The verb of the sub-event will be cast to infinitive (possibly bare) or cast to participle. A 'pure' modal (like 'should') always controls by 'raising to subject' and 'bare infinitive'. The 'impure' modal 'ought' differs in that the infinitive may be marked (by 'to'). A control verb (like 'need') is a control verbal that has its own 'action', as well as controlling a sub-event. The infinitive marker may be deleted when the control is negated, making it parse like a modal: "He needs to drink, but he need not eat."
Old answer: 'Ought' does not really become modal when the infinitive marker 'to' is elided. Rather, 'ought' is still a 'control verb', but the controlled verb '[to] go' is reduced to a bare infinitive. This is also true of control verbs like 'need' and 'dare'. Because it works with so few verbs, I would call it archaic.
