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In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. Grammar is the field of Linguistics that covers the Rules governing the use of any given natural language. In the usual (traditional) description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States In Linguistics, the term particle is a word lacking a strict definition but has the function of changing the relation of the parts of the sentence to one another and is therefore As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition of infinitive that applies to all languages; however, in languages that have infinitives, they generally have most of the following properties:

However, it bears repeating that none of the above is a defining quality of the infinitive; infinitives do not have all these properties in every language, as it is shown below, and other verb forms may have one or more of them. For example, English gerunds and participles have most of these properties as well. In Linguistics, “gerund” is a term used to refer to various non-finite verb forms in various languages As applied to English, In Linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium, a Calque of Greek μετοχη "partaking" is a derivative of a non-finite

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Infinitives in English

English has three non-finite verbal forms, but by long-standing convention, the term "infinitive" is applied to only one of these. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States (The other two are the past- and present-participle forms, where the present-participle form is also the gerund form. In Linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium, a Calque of Greek μετοχη "partaking" is a derivative of a non-finite In Linguistics, “gerund” is a term used to refer to various non-finite verb forms in various languages As applied to English, ) In English, a verb's infinitive is its unmarked form, such as be, do, have, or sit, often introduced by the particle to. In Linguistics, the term particle is a word lacking a strict definition but has the function of changing the relation of the parts of the sentence to one another and is therefore When this particle is absent, the infinitive is said to be a bare infinitive; when it is present, it is generally considered to be a part of the infinitive, then known as the full infinitive (or to-infinitive), and there is a controversy about whether it should be separated from the main word of the infinitive. (See Split infinitive. A split infinitive or cleft infinitive is an English-language grammatical construction ) Nonetheless, modern theories typically do not consider the to-infinitive to be a distinct constituent, instead taking the particle to to operate on an entire verb phrase; so, to buy a car is parsed as to {buy {a car}}, not as {to buy} {a car}. In syntactic analysis a constituent is a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit within a hierarchical structure

The bare infinitive and the full infinitive are in complementary distribution. Complementary distribution in Linguistics is the relationship between two different elements where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is They are not generally interchangeable, but the distinction does not generally affect the meaning of a sentence; rather, certain contexts call almost exclusively for the bare infinitive, and all other contexts call for the full infinitive.

Huddleston and Pullum's recent Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) does not use the notion of the infinitive, arguing that English uses the same form of the verb, the plain form, in infinitival clauses that it uses in imperative and present-subjunctive clauses. Rodney D Huddleston is a linguist and Grammarian specializing in the study and description of English Professor Geoffrey K Pullum (born March 8, 1945 in Irvine, Scotland) is a linguist specialising in the study of English In Grammar, the subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a Verb mood that exists in many languages

Uses of the bare infinitive

The bare infinitive is used in a rather limited number of contexts, but some of these are quite common:

Uses of the full infinitive

The full infinitive (or to-infinitive) is used in a great many different contexts:

When the verb is implied, some dialects will reduce the to-infinitive to simply to: "Do I have to?"

The infinitive with auxiliary verbs

The auxiliary verb do does not have an infinitive — even though do is also a main verb and in that sense is often used in the infinitive. One does not say *I asked to do not have to, but rather, either I asked not to have to or I asked to not have to (but see split infinitive). A split infinitive or cleft infinitive is an English-language grammatical construction Similarly, one cannot emphasize an infinitive using do; one cannot say, "I hear him do say it all the time. "

Nonetheless, the auxiliary verbs have (used to form the perfect aspect) and be (used to form the passive voice and continuous aspect) both commonly appear in the infinitive: "It's thought to have been a ceremonial site", or "I want to be doing it already. The perfect aspect is variously considered either an aspect or tense which calls a listener's attention to the consequences generated by an action rather than the In Grammar, the voice (also called gender or diathesis of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state that the verb expresses and the participants identified The continuous and progressive aspects are Grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time they are non-habitual imperfective "

Defective verbs

The modal auxiliary verbs, can, may, shall, will and must are defective in that they do not have infinitives; so, one cannot say, *I want him to can do it, but rather must say, I want him to be able to do it. A modal verb (also modal, modal auxiliary verb, modal auxiliary) is a type of Auxiliary verb that is used to indicate modality. In Linguistics, a defective verb is a Verb with an incomplete conjugation. The periphrases to be able to, to have to and to be going to are generally used in these cases. In Linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi- Word compound that acts as a single Verb.

Germanic languages

The original Germanic suffix of the infinitive was -an, with verbs derived from other words ending in -jan or -janan. In German it is -en ("sagen"), with -eln or -ern endings on a few words based on -l or -r roots ("segeln", "ändern"). The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. The use of zu with infinitives is similar to English to, but is less frequent than in English. German infinitives can function as nouns, often expressing abstractions of the action, in which case they are of neuter gender: das Essen means the eating, but also the food. In Dutch infinitives also end in -en (zeggen — to say), sometimes used with te similar to English to, e. Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname g. "Het is niet moeilijk te begrijpen" → "It is not difficult to understand. " The few verbs with stems ending in -a have infinitives in -n (gaan — to go, slaan — to hit). In Scandinavian languages the n has dropped out and the infinitive suffix has been reduced to -e or -a. The infinitives of these languages are inflected for passive voice through the addition of -s to the active form. Afrikaans has lost the distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of the verbs "wees" (to be), which admits the present form "is", and the verb "hê" (to have), whose present form is "het". Afrikaans is an Indo-European language, derived from 17th century Dutch and classified as Low Franconian Germanic, mainly spoken in

Latin and Romance languages

The formation of the infinitive in the Romance languages reflects that in their ancestor, Latin, in which almost all verbs had an infinitive ending with -re (preceded by one of various thematic vowels). The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. For example, in Spanish and Portuguese, infinitives mostly end in -ar, -er, or -ir. Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. In Romanian the so-called "long infinitives" end in -are, -ere, -eare, -ire (just like Italian), but these are also often used as feminine nouns, and are treated exactly as feminine nouns. Romanian or Daco-Romanian ( dated: Rumanian or Roumanian; self designation limba română, ˈlimba roˈmɨnə is a Romance The "short infinitives" used in verbal contexts (e. g. after an auxiliary verb) have the endings -(e)a, -e, and -i. In all Romance languages, infinitives can also be used as nouns.

Latin infinitives challenged several of the generalizations about infinitives. They did inflect for voice (amare, "to love", amari, to be loved) and for aspect (amare, "to love", amavisse, "to have loved"), and allowed for an overt expression of the subject (video Socratem currere, "I see Socrates running"). In Grammar, the voice (also called gender or diathesis of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state that the verb expresses and the participants identified In Linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a Verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof in the described event or state

Romance languages inherited from Latin the possibility of an overt expression of the subject. Moreover, the "inflected infinitive" (or "personal infinitive") found in Portuguese, Galician, and (some varieties of) Sardinian inflects for person and number. Sardinian ( Sardu, Saldu) is after Italian the main language spoken in the island of Sardinia, Italy, remarkable for being the most conservative These are the only Indo-European languages that allow infinitives to take person and number endings. This helps to make infinitive clauses very common in these languages; for example, the English finite clause in order that you/she/we have. . . would be translated to Portuguese as para teres/ela ter/termos. . . (it is a null-subject language). In Linguistic typology, a null subject language is a Language whose Grammar permits an Independent clause to lack an explicit subject The Portuguese personal infinitive has no proper tenses, only aspects (imperfect and perfect), but tenses can be expressed using periphrastic structures. In Linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or relationship is expressed by a Free morpheme (typically one or more Function For instance, even though you sing/have sung/are going to sing could be translated to apesar de cantares/teres cantado/ires cantar.

Other Romance languages (including Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, and some Italian dialects) allow uninflected infinitives to combine with overt nominative subjects. For example, Spanish al abrir yo los ojos ("when I opened my eyes") or sin yo saberlo ("without my knowing about it"). [2]

Balto-Slavic languages

The infinitive in Russian usually ends in -t’ (ть) preceded by a thematic vowel; some verbs have a stem ending in a consonant and change the t to ch, such as *mogt’ → moč’ (*могть → мочь) "can". Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages In Indo-European linguistics, a vowel stem is a Noun or Verb stem that ends in a vowel that appears in or otherwise influences the noun or verb's Inflectional

Some other Balto-Slavic languages have the infinitive typically ending in, for example, -ć (sometimes -c) in Polish, -t’ in Slovak, -t (formerly -ti) in Czech and Latvian (with a handful ending in -s on the latter), -ty (-ти) in Ukrainian, -ць (-ts') in Belarusian. The Balto-Slavic language group consists of the Baltic and Slavic languages, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages Polish ( język polski, polszczyzna) is the Official language of Poland. The Slovak language ( slovenčina, slovenský jazyk, not to be confused with Slovenščina) sometimes referred to as "Slovakian" Czech (ˈʧɛk čeština ˈʧɛʃcɪna in Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers it is the majority language in the Ukrainian (in Ukrainian украї́нська мо́ва ukrayins'ka mova,) is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. The Belarusian language, or Belorussian,(беларуская мова BGN/PCGN: byelaruskaya mova, Scientific: belaruskaja mova Serbo-Croatian officially retains the infinitive -ti or -ći, but is more flexible than the other Slavs in breaking the infinitive through a clause, especially in Serbian variant, but nevertheless the infinitive is always found in dictionaries and in language textbooks. Slovennian and Lithuanian infinitives also end in -ti like Serbo-Croatian. The Serbo-Croatian language or Croato-Serbian language (cрпскохрватски језик srpskohrvatski jezik) is a South Slavic Diasystem Bulgarian and Macedonian have lost the infinitive altogether and, for that reason, books concerning these two languages put the present (if imperferctive) or simple future (if perfective) first-person singular conjugation. Bulgarian (български език IPA: ɛzˈik is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group Macedonian () is the official Language of the Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages.

Hebrew

Hebrew has two infinitives, the infinitive absolute and the infinitive construct. The infinitive construct is used after prepositions and is inflected with pronominal endings to indicate its subject or object: bikhtōbh hassōphēr "when the scribe wrote", ahare lekhtō "after his going". When the infinitive construct is preceded by ל (lə-, li-, lā-) "to", it has a similar meaning as the English to-infinitive, and this is its most frequent use in Modern Hebrew. The infinitive absolute is used to add emphasis or certainty to the verb, as in מות ימות mōth yāmūth (literally "die he will die"; figuratively, "he shall indeed die"). This construction is analogous to English cognate object constructions, as in he slept a sleep of peace. In Linguistics, a cognate object (or cognate accusative) is a Verb 's object that is Cognate with the verb This usage is commonplace in the Bible, but in Modern Hebrew it is restricted to high-flown literary works.

Note, however, that the to-infinitive of Hebrew is not the dictionary form; that is the third person singular perfect form. In Linguistics a lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata) has two distinct interpretations morphology / Lexicography: the

Finnish

To form the first infinitive, the strong form of the root (without consonant gradation or epenthetic 'e') is used, and these changes occur:

  1. the root is suffixed with -ta/-tä according to vowel harmony
  2. consonant elision takes place if applicable, e. Consonant gradation is a type of Consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades" Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance ( see below) assimilatory phonological process involving Vowels in some languages g. juoks+ta → juosta
  3. assimilation of clusters violating sonority hierarchy if applicable, e. g. nuol+ta → nuolla, sur+ta → surra
  4. 't' weakens to 'd' after diphthongs, e. g. juo+ta → juoda
  5. 't' elides if intervocalic, e. g. kirjoitta+ta → kirjoittaa

As such, it is inconvenient for dictionary use, because the imperative would be closer to the root word. Nevertheless, dictionaries use the first infinitive.

There are four other infinitives, which create a noun-, or adverb-like word from the verb. For example, the third infinitive is -ma/-mä, which creates an adjective-like word like "written" from "write": kirjoita- becomes kirjoittama.

Seri

The Seri language of northwestern Mexico has infinitival forms which are used in two constructions (with the verb meaning 'want' and with the verb meaning 'be able'). Seri (referred to as cmiique iitom by the Seri people is a Language isolate spoken by the Seri people in two villages on the coast of Sonora The infinitive is formed by adding a prefix to the stem: either iha- [iʔa-] (plus a vowel change of certain vowel-initial stems) if the complement clause is transitive, or ica- [ika-] (and no vowel change) if the complement clause is intransitive. In Syntax, a transitive verb is a Verb that requires both a subject and one or more objects Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs In Grammar, an intransitive Verb does not take an object. In more technical terms an intransitive verb has only one argument (its subject The infinitive shows agreement in number with the controlling subject. Examples are: icatax ihmiimzo 'I want to go', where icatax is the singular infinitive of the verb 'go' (singular root is -atax), and icalx hamiimcajc 'we want to go', where icalx is the plural infinitive. Examples of the transitive infinitive: ihaho 'to see it/him/her/them' (root -aho), and ihacta 'to look at it/him/her/them' (root -oocta).

Translation to languages without an infinitive

In languages without an infinitive, the infinitive is translated either as a that-clause or as a verbal noun. A verbal noun is a Noun formed directly as an Inflexion of a Verb or a verb stem, sharing at least in part its constructions For example, in Literary Arabic the sentence "I want to write a book" is translated as either urīdu an aktuba kitāban (literally "I want that I should write a book", with a verb in the subjunctive mood) or urīdu kitābata kitābin (literally "I want the writing of a book", with the masdar or verbal noun), and in Demotic Arabic biddi aktob kitāb (subordinate clause with verb in subjunctive). In Grammar, the subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a Verb mood that exists in many languages Similarly, the modern Greek for "I want to write", as opposed to the ancient Greek <θέλω γράφειν/-ψειν> with the infinitive, is <θέλω να γράφω/-ψω>, which is literally "I want that I should write".

Even in languages that have infinitives, similar constructions are sometimes necessary where English would allow the infinitive. For example, in French the sentence "I want you to come" translates to Je veux que vous veniez (literally "I want that you come", with come being in the subjunctive mood). However, "I want to come" is simply Je veux venir, using the infinitive, just as in English. In Russian, sentences such as "I want you to leave" do not make use of the infinitive form. Rather, they contain the conjunction чтобы "in order to/so that" and the past tense form of the verb: "Я хочу чтобы вы ушли" (lit. "I want so that you left").

Notes

  1. ^ English Page - Gerunds and Infinitives Part 1 [sic]
  2. ^ Kim Schulte (1994), Pragmatic Causation in the Rise of the Romance Prepositional Infinitive: A statistically-based study with special reference to Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge.

See also

In Linguistics, an auxiliary (also called helping verb, helper verb, auxiliary verb, or verbal auxiliary) is a Verb functioning A finite verb is a Verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs In Linguistics, “gerund” is a term used to refer to various non-finite verb forms in various languages As applied to English, In Linguistics, a non-finite verb (or a verbal) is a Verb form that is not limited by a subject and more generally is not fully inflected by A split infinitive or cleft infinitive is an English-language grammatical construction A verbal noun is a Noun formed directly as an Inflexion of a Verb or a verb stem, sharing at least in part its constructions

Dictionary

infinitive

-noun

  1. (grammar) The uninflected form of a verb. In English, this is usually formed with the verb stem preceded by 'to'. e.g. 'to sit'
  2. (grammar) A verbal noun formed from the infinitive of a verb

-adjective

  1. (grammar) Formed with the infinitive
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