What's the difference between these two sentences:
- Mon but est faire le bien autour de moi.
- Mon but est de faire le bien autour de moi.
What's the difference between these two sentences:
In that situation, de is used to build a prepositional group (de faire le bien autour de moi).
This prepositional group is the attribute of the subject. There are different kinds of constructions for the attribute of the subject:
In the second sentence the "de" has the same role than the "to" when you say
My goal is to do ...
The first sentence is wrong. It would be similar than saying in English:
My goal is do good things ....
According to the Banque de dépannage linguistique, it is a pecularity of the infinitive phrases that are arguments of être if the subject is not an infinitive itself : such constructions have to begin by de. I'd have a hard time trying to derive a general rule from this
L'infinitif en fonction attribut est précédé de la préposition de lorsque le sujet n'est pas un autre verbe à l'infinitif et qu'il est repris par une expression comme c'est ou ce serait.