believe that S+V/ believe O+O.C

I am not an English native speaker, and I have a question about the following sentences:

I believe that Mary will arrive tomorrow. (grammatical)

*I believe Mary to arrive tomorrow. (ungrammatical)

Why can't we say "I believe Mary to arrive tomorrow"?

I believed (that) he was honest. = I believed him (to be) honest.

My dictionary says that both sentences are grammatically correct, so I am really confused.

When can I use "S (subject) V (verb) O (object) OC (objective complement)" structure with the verb believe?

Solution 1:

Well, I guess this won't get the bounty since you want someone to explain why it's ungrammatical, but

it is grammatical.

I mean, we don't usually use this structure for the verb "arrive", but we use it for "be", "have", "possess", "mean", "hold", "understand"... (See also here.)

I can immediately parse "I believe her to arrive tomorrow" as a formal, fairly stuffy answer to the question "When will she get here?" meaning "I believe [it is the case that] she'll arrive tomorrow".

It's just not terribly common.

The archaic feeling of this way of talking that Resber picked up on comes from the way it mimics Latin grammar instead of using the more natural and versatile "that clause". Using English this way (along with not splitting infinitives, &c.) was much more common back when everyone publishing a book had sat through years of Latin classes with a tutor or at their grammar school.

Going back to that list of infinitives that more commonly show up with "believe", it seems to be the case that English speakers tend to use that structure with stative verbs rather than active ones. It's common in general to use "that clauses" for verbs reporting things (say, tell, &c.) or describing mental processes (think, know, believe, &c.). Expressing it that way gives you more freedom to mark tense and mood or add adverbs and additional clauses. That extra nuance is more important when discussing actions.

It's not common at all.

Specifically, this paper notes research that shows that English almost exclusively uses "believe [obj.] [inf.]" for stative verbs or perfective ones (i.e., "I believe her to have arrived yesterday"). There are exceptions and even their example of a "mistake"

The new government, wrongly believing tribal leaders to support Pakistan in the war, stationed a counter-insurgency force in the area.

is perfectly clear, if a bit clunky. Emending it to "to have supported" certainly sounds more natural but has a different meaning. (In that case, their support or even the entire war is already finished.)

Still, to the extent that native speakers tell you such sentences are "wrong" or "too awkward", that's the mechanism underneath why. If you want to call it a "rule" and the exceptions "ungrammatical", you can but it's not really anything they're conscious of doing and is just a side effect of wanting to have more freedom to adjust or describe active verbs, especially their tense.

Solution 2:

I think the problem here comes from the verb, believe. One can say, "I believe him to be honest." But, when you say "I believe him to arrive tomorrow," I believe that most native speakers would find that awkward, even if grammatically correct. I think because "believe" is a transitive verb that requires an object in this case. It gets the object "him" but the phrase "to arrive tomorrow" does not conform to general pattern we are used to hearing. It sounds almost too formal or archaic, like "I wish him to wake up now." It is an unusual choice for an OC. When you use the form of "to be" it acts like an equation making the following word work like an adjective: him = honest. But when you use another type of verb it does not quite work the same: Mary = to arrive? The second example sounds like "I believe Mary arriving tomorrow." Native speakers would expect "I believe (that) Mary is arriving tomorrow". I hope this helps, I cannot find a term for the group of verbs that fall into this category or a specific rule that precludes using certain infinitives after believe.

Solution 3:

Let's compare three sentences (assuming that we are allowed to use only will for the future tense for comparison) as follows:

(1) I believe that Mary arrived.
(2) I believe that Mary will arrive.

Now, contrast the above two sentences with the below one:

(3) *I believe Mary to arrive. (ungrammatical with *)

As you can clearly notice, you can never tell whether No. (3) means (1) or (2). It is a very important difference in context where you need to clarify a tense of the verb. (the time of arriving).

To infinitive is called infinitive because it can't inflect for tense and person. In order to clearly specify the tense, you should not use to infinitive.

Now, contrast the above (1) and (2) with your example:

(4) I believed (that) he was honest. = (5) I believed him (to be) honest.

Believed and was in No. (4) used the past tense. There could be no confusion.

In No. (5), there is only one tense, i.e. believed which is the past tense. However, you can use to-infinitive because it indicates the same tense as believed. Also, to be could be omitted as it is not absolutely necessary and the adjective honest could function as an object complement on its own.

There are many English transitive verbs that can't be used in the No. (3) structure, i.e.:

*I think him to come tomorrow. *I hope him to come tomorrow. *I guess him to come tomorrow.

Not only are they ungrammatical, but they don't sound natural.

I want you to tell me the truth. I hope to see you soon.

The above two sentences are all grammatically correct as there is no particular reason to specify any tense for to tell the truth and to see.

The above explanation doesn't cover all transitive verbs in English and you need to learn how to use them on a case-by-case basis.

However, if you focus on tense, object, object complement and that-clause after a verb, you would easily understand some patterns for English verbs. The following link explains Verb + object + TO-infinitive structure. And this link lists the verbs that have Verb + that-clause structure.

Solution 4:

Unlike all the answers, I think that 'I believe Mary to arrive tomorrow' it is absolutely grammatically correct, but just semantically incorrect. How come 'my belief causes Mary to arrive tomorrow'? Do I have a supernatural power? It just, as it is, does not make sense. At least for me, it is read as 'I can handle Mary to arrive tomorrow by my belief', but 'I belive him (to be) honest' does make sense because it is read as 'My belief is for him to be honest' and in this case 'him' is drawn as a man who is honest, so it is both grammatically and semantically correct. Don't fully trust my opinion, it is just my subjective answer.

(EDITED) I have come to realize my opinion is not plausible at all in resolving the problem and very ridiculous even to me, so I've come to decide to edit it. Anyway, give me one more chance to let me elucidate it based on my second thought. I think it is deeply associated with the tense problem related to "to infinitive", because If we were saying "She believes him to arrive tomorrow", we couldn't exactly fix the tense of the sentence at some point. Thereby, it can mean either "She believes he would arrive tomorrow" or "She believes he will arrive tomorrow". It can be meant for the formar if she has already been told in the past directly by him or someone else that he will arrive tomorrow, and therefore she still believes it is true that he would arrive tomorrow. In this way, I am sure that active verbs cannot be used in such ways only if a sentence cannot fix tense.

[1] She believes him to have arrived home.

It's correct because even though being an active verb it is parsed only as "She believes he have arrived".

[2] She believes him to understand her.

It's also correct, but the reason is different because it is kind of a state verb and she generally believes that he understands her regardless of time, so whether tense is past or future is not important.

[3] She believes him to be honest.

It's correct as well as [2].