Information About

Infinitive
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  • In most of their uses, infinitives are Non-finite Verb s.

  • They function as other Lexical Categories — usually Noun s — within the clauses that contain them, for example by serving as the subject of another verb.

  • They do not represent any of the verb's Arguments (as ''employer'' and ''employee'' do).

  • They are not Inflected to agree with any subject, and their subject, if they have one, is not Case-marked as such.

  • They cannot serve as the only verb of a declarative sentence.

  • They are the verb's Lemma , Citation Form , and/or ''name''; that is, they are regarded as its basic uninflected form, and/or they are used in giving its definition or conjugation.

  • They do not have Tense , Aspect , Moods , and/or Voice , or they are limited in the range of tenses, aspects, moods, and/or voices that they can use. (In languages where infinitives do not have moods at all, they are usually treated as being their own non-finite mood.)

  • They are used with Auxiliary Verb s.


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 Gerund s and Participle s have most of these properties as well.


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. (The other two are the past- and present- Participle forms, where the present-participle form is also the Gerund form.) In English, a verb's infinitive is its unmarked form, such as ''be'', ''do'', ''have'', or ''sit'', often introduced by the Particle ''to''. 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 .) 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}''.

The bare infinitive and the full infinitive 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 to-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.


Uses of the bare infinitive


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

  • The bare infinitive is used as the Main Verb after the dummy auxiliary verb ''do'', or any Modal Auxiliary Verb (such as ''will'', ''can'', or ''should''), except that ''ought'' usually takes a to-infinitive. So, "I will/do/can/etc. see it."

  • Several common verbs of perception, including ''see'', ''watch'', ''hear'', ''feel'', and ''sense'' take a direct object and a bare infinitive, where the bare infinitive indicates an action taken by the main verb's direct object. So, "I saw/watched/heard/etc. it happen." (A similar meaning can be effected by using the present participle instead: "I saw/watched/heard/etc. it '''happening'''." The difference is that the former implies that the entirety of the event was perceived, while the latter implies that part of the progress of the event was perceived.)

  • Similarly with several common verbs of permission or causation, including ''make'', ''bid'', ''let'', and ''have''. So, "I made/bade/let/had him do it." (However, ''make'' takes a to-infinitive in the passive voice: "I was made '''to do''' it.")

  • The bare infinitive is the dictionary form of a verb, and is generally the form of a verb that receives a definition; however, the definition itself generally uses a to-infinitive. So, "The word 'amble' means 'to walk slowly.'"

  • The bare infinitive form is also the present Subjunctive form and the Imperative form, although most grammarians do not consider uses of the present subjunctive or imperative to be uses of the bare infinitive.



Uses of the full infinitive


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

  • Outside of dictionary headwords, it is the most commonly used Citation Form of the English verb: "How do we conjugate the verb ''to go''?"

  • It can be used like a noun phrase, expressing its action or state in an abstract, general way. So, "To be is '''to do'''." (A Gerund can also be used for this: "'''Being''' is '''doing'''.")

  • It can be used like an adjective or adverb, expressing purpose or intent. So, "He is man to talk to", or " order '''to meditate''', one must free one's mind."

  • In either of the above uses, it can often be given a subject using the preposition ''for'': "For him to fail now would be a great disappointment"; " order '''for you to get there on time''', you'll need to leave now." (The former sentence could also be written, "His failing now would be a great disappointment.")

  • It can be used after many intransitive verbs; in this case, it generally has the subject of the main verb as its implicit subject. So, "I agreed to leave", or "He failed '''to make''' his case." (This may be considered a special case of the noun-like use above.)

  • It can be used after the direct objects of many transitive verbs; in this case, it generally has the direct object of the main verb as its implicit subject. So, "I convinced him to leave with me", or "He asked her '''to make''' his case on his behalf."

  • As a special case of the above, it can often be used after an intransitive verb, together with a subject using the preposition ''for'': "I arranged for him to accompany me", or "I waited '''for summer to arrive'''."


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


The infinitive with auxiliary verbs


  • ''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 ). 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."


Defective verbs


  • ''I want him to can do it'', but rather must say, ''I want him to be able to do it''. The Circumlocutions ''to be able to'', ''to have to'' and ''to be going to'' are generally used in these cases.



GERMANIC LANGUAGES


The original Germanic suffix of the infinitive was ''-an'', with verbs derived from other words ending in ''-jan'' or ''-janan''. In infinitives also end in ''-en'' (''zeggen'' — ''to say''), sometimes used with ''te'' similar to English ''to'', e.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''. 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".


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). For example, in Spanish and Portuguese , infinitives mostly end in ''-ar'', ''-er'', or ''-ir''. In Romanian the so-called "long infinitives" end in ''-re'', but these are in fact nominalizations, and are treated exactly as feminine nouns. The "short infinitives" used in verbal contexts (e.g. after an auxiliary verb) have the endings ''-(e)a'', ''-e'', and ''-i''.

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").

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. 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 ter'''es'''/ela ter/ter'''mos'''...'' (it is a Null-subject Language ). The Portuguese personal infinitive has no proper tenses, only aspects (imperfect and perfect), but tenses can be expressed using Periphrastic structures. 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").

Source: {Link without Title} 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.


SLAVIC LANGUAGES


  • mogt’ → moč’'' (---могть → мочь) "can".


Some other Slavic Languages have the infinitive typically ending in, for example, ''-ć'' (sometimes ''-c'') in Polish , ''-t’'' in Slovak , ''-t'' (formerly ''-ti'') in Czech , ''-ty'' (-ти) in Ukrainian . Serbo-Croatian officially retains it but the infinitive is dying out in Serbia . Bulgarian and Macedonian have lost the infinitive altogether.


HEBREW


constructions, as in ''he slept a sleep of peace''. 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 past tense.


FINNISH

To form the first infinitive, the strong form of the root (without Consonant Gradation or epenthetic 'e') is used, and these changes occur:
# the root is suffixed with ''-ta/-tä'' according to Vowel Harmony
# consonant elision takes place if applicable, e.g. ''juoks+ta'' → ''juosta''
# assimilation of clusters violating sonority hierarchy if applicable, e.g. ''nuol+ta'' → ''nuolla'', ''sur+ta'' → ''surra''
# 't' weakens to 'd' after diphthongs, e.g. ''juo+ta'' → ''juoda''
# '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 , or ''ica-'' (and no vowel change) if the complement clause is Intransitive . 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 . 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). Similarly, the modern Greek for "I want to write", as opposed to the ancient Greek θέλω γράφειν with the infinitive, is θέλω να γράψω, 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.


SEE ALSO