Here’s an expert example of a defining relative clause using TO-infinitive:
Several years earlier, she‘d become the first woman to ski to the South Pole.
- The first woman to ski
can be written in another way with the same meaning:
- the first woman who skied
Pearson’s GSE 56 B1+ is defined:
construct defining (restrictive) relative clauses with ‘to’ + infinitive verb phrases.
- He’s the first person to fly.
- He’s the only one to stay up late.
‘Defining relative clauses using TO-infinitive‘ are very hard to find in corpora because the formal patterns are used for other grammar structures. The only way to narrow down a search is to restrict this to people.
Our first search in iWeb corpus:
. * person|man|woman|boy|girl|actor|party|student|people _TO
1 . THE FIRST PERSON TO 1051
2 . THE LAST PERSON TO 229
3 . THE FIRST WOMAN TO 137
4 . THE FIRST PEOPLE TO 112
5 . THE ONLY PERSON TO 106
6 . THE BEST PERSON TO 103
7 . THE FIRST MAN TO 101
8 . THE BEST PEOPLE TO 65
9 . THE FIRST STUDENT TO 64
10 . THE ONLY PEOPLE TO 60
11 . THE NEXT PERSON TO 57
12 . THE LAST MAN TO 44
13 . THE ONLY MAN TO 33
14 . THE SECOND PERSON TO 26
15 . THE LAST PEOPLE TO 25
16 . THE LAST WOMAN TO 25
17 . THE FIRST GIRL TO 12
18 . THE ONLY WOMAN TO 12
19 . THE YOUNGEST PERSON TO 10
20 . THE FIRST PARTY TO 10
first|last|only _NN to _VVI
32 FIRST WOMAN TO WIN 913
57 FIRST TEAM TO WIN 614
61 FIRST WOMAN TO HOLD 597
69 FIRST WOMAN TO SERVE 560
75 FIRST PERSON TO GET 526
89 FIRST WOMAN TO RECEIVE 464
91 FIRST PLAYER TO REACH 462
92 LAST PERSON TO SEE 461
100 FIRST PLAYER TO WIN 428