was/were to have left and was/were to leave

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hi,

Please tell me the difference between :

‘was/were to have left’ and ‘was/were to leave’?

Mary was to have left Warsaw last Friday. = she wanted to leave Warsaw but she didn’t do it and we know that she didn’t do it.

Mary was to leave = ?

Thanks

2

Unreal past situations
The perfect infinitive is often used after verbs like mean, be, would like etc., to talk about unreal past situations.
She was to have returned yesterday, but she fell ill.
I meant to have posted the letter, but I forgot. (I did not post the letter.)
englishgrammar.org/perfect-infinitives/

Be + to-infinitive can also be used in the past: Mr Jones was to speak at the meeting. (it was arranged and he did)
But was/were + to + perfect infinitive means that the arranged event did not actually happen:
Mr Jones was to have spoken at the meeting, but he had to cancel because of his illness. grammaring.com/be-to-infinitive

3

I feel my contribution wasn’t informative enough. For more, you could turn to:

bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learn … v103.shtml
grammar-teacher.com/understandin … nfinitive/
forum.wordreference.com/threads/ … e.1059464/

4

Hi Saneta,

This is exactly right.

To answer your question -

This means that the plan/arrangement was that Mary was going to leave but whether she did or didn’t leave is not known.

In a present tense - Mary is to leave = the plan is that she is going to/will leave.

Alan

5

Be + to-infinitive can also be used in the past: Mr Jones was to speak at the meeting. (it was arranged and he did)

Dear Alan, so why there was written in bold on this grammar page ?