Section V5.2 has shown that Dutch has three types of infinitival complement clauses, which are illustrated in (69). The first type is the infinitival accusativus cum infinitivo construction, which occurs as the complement of perception verbs like ziento see and the causative/permissive verb latento make/let. The second and the third type are characterized by the presence of the infinitival marker teto; they often occur in the same position, but differ in the presence/absence of the preposition-like element om (often glossed as for, but different from it by in that it lacks the ability to assign case to the subject of the infinitival clause). Since bare infinitives like (69a) never occur as the complement of a preposition, this section will focus below on the te-infinitives in (69b&c); PRO stands for the implied subject of the infinitival clause.

The status of om in (69c) is unclear; some regard it as an infinitival complementizer, others as a regular preposition. The first position seems the most plausible one. First, like the complementizer datthat, om seems to have no clear semantic content; both are merely used to introduce embedded clauses. Second, the verb belovento promise in (69c) usually cannot select an om-PP; cf. Jan beloofde Marie (*om) het boekhe promised Marie the book. Finally, the examples in (70) show that, like dat, om also occurs when an anticipatory pronominal PP is present.

For these reasons, we will assume that om is a complementizer. If it should turn out that, despite the above arguments, the element om is a preposition, we must conclude that it is not a preposition selected by the verb beloven in (69c) or the prepositions naar and tegen in (70). Having established that om+te-infinitivals are not (selected) PPs, we can proceed to discuss the question as to whether te-infinitives can occur as complements of temporal or non-temporal adverbial PPs; we will start with the first case.