BE forced to infinitve – English Grammar Profiler

The phrase “be forced to infinitive” means to be made to do something that one does not want to do. The phrase can also be used to express the idea of being compelled to do something by external circumstances, even if one is not physically forced to do it.It is a passive voice construction.

In the English Grammar Profile, B2 point 151 in

MODALITY  “be forced to’ is used to talk about an unnamed obligation, where the circumstances are beyond the control of the speaker/writer.

I was interested to see what some of the stand-out infinitives would be with this structure.   On the iWeb corpus _vb* forced to _v?i* finds quite an even spread. Apart from the usual stop words (most common words). There is no doubt negativity associated with “forced to” and a sense of ending.

1 WAS FORCED TO LEAVE 2331

Further collocates 5 spaces either side of “was forced to leave”:

1 HE (PPHS1 ) 580
2 SHE (PPHS1 ) 270

3 GAME (NN1 ) 131 4 FAMILY (NN1 ) 102 5 SCHOOL (NN1 ) 100 6 COUNTRY (NN1 ) 95 7 DUE (II21 ) 77 8 FIELD (NN1 ) 54 9 BEHIND (RL@ ) 32

10 MOTHER (NN1 ) 23

From a sociolinguistic perspective, males seem to be twice as likely to be forced to leave somewhere.  This can be guessed at in a variety of ways.  Males tend to play more games on fields or be in the media playing sport.  They could be injured or just “out” in cricket.  They probably also get into more trouble at school (don’t quote me on this).

2 WAS FORCED TO RESIGN 2095

3 BE FORCED TO PAY 1996

4 WAS FORCED TO TAKE 1768

5 WERE FORCED TO LEAVE 1585 6 WAS FORCED TO MAKE 1504 7 BE FORCED TO TAKE 1440

8 BE FORCED TO USE 1295

9 WAS FORCED TO FLEE 1278

10 ARE FORCED TO USE 1245
11 BE FORCED TO DO 1232

12 WAS FORCED TO RETIRE 1220

13 BE FORCED TO MAKE 1196
14 ARE FORCED TO WORK 1176

15 WAS FORCED TO CLOSE 1117

16 ARE FORCED TO MAKE 1112 17 ARE FORCED TO LIVE 1093

18 WAS FORCED TO GO 1076

19 WAS FORCED TO WITHDRAW 1046

20 WERE FORCED TO FLEE 1040 21 ARE FORCED TO TAKE 1014 22 WAS FORCED TO GIVE 955 23 ARE FORCED TO PAY 927 24 WAS FORCED TO MOVE 919 25 ARE FORCED TO DO 898 26 WERE FORCED TO TAKE 898 27 WAS FORCED TO USE 888 28 IS FORCED TO MAKE 862 29 BE FORCED TO LEAVE 861 30 WERE FORCED TO WORK 860 31 BE FORCED TO GO 858 32 WERE FORCED TO MOVE 847 33 IS FORCED TO TAKE 830 34 WAS FORCED TO SELL 825 35 WAS FORCED TO PAY 823 36 WAS FORCED TO DO 820 37 BEING FORCED TO DO 780 38 WERE FORCED TO MAKE 736 39 BE FORCED TO SELL 735 40 ARE FORCED TO GO 729 41 BEEN FORCED TO LEAVE 712

42 BE FORCED TO MOVE 703

43 WAS FORCED TO ABANDON 678

Between rank 44 and 58 we find the verbs: RETURN, LIVE, PAY, FLEE, CLOSE, TAKE, USE, BE, STOP, ADMIT, PULL, LEAVE, CHANGE, MAKE, WORK.