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In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. It is called the "infinitive" because the verb is usually not made "finite", or limited by inflection. In some languages, however, there are inflected forms of the infinitive denoting attributes such as tense, person and number. It happens for example in Portuguese. There are languages that do not have infinitives at all, for example Arabic, Bulgarian and Modern Greek. Grammar is the discovery, enunciation, and study of rules governing the use of language. ...
A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ...
Inflection or inflexion refers to a modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) so that it reflects grammatical (i. ...
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and others. ...
Number, in linguistics, is a grammatical category relevant to certain lexemes such as nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs. ...
In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ...
Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ...
A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages it occurs in. ...
Arabic (العربية al-arabiyyah, or less formally arabi) is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ...
Modern Greek (Îεοελληνική) is a dialect family that refers to the fifth stage of the evolution of the Greek language (the first four being Mycenean, Ancient Greek, Post-Classical or Hellenistic Greek and Medieval Greek), and it includes every dialect and idiom of Hellenic speech that exists in the world today. ...
In foreign language courses, the present simple tense of the infinitive is often referred to as the "dictionary form", as this is the basic form of a verb which is usually presented in dictionaries. ...
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, and some grammarians hold that it should not be separated from the main word of the infinitive. (See split infinitive.) The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ...
In linguistics, a gerund is a kind of verbal noun. ...
In linguistics, the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition. ...
A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in the English language produced by inserting a word or phrase, usually an adverb or adverbial phrase, between to and a verb in its infinitive form. ...
The bare infinitive and the to-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.
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/bid/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.
In linguistics, an auxiliary or helping verb is a verb whose function it is to give further semantic information about the main or full verb which follows it. ...
The English modal auxiliary verbs are will and would shall and should may and might can and could must ought to Modal auxiliary verbs help other verbs express a meaning or an idea but have no meaning by themselves. ...
The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that is subjective, from the persons viewpoint, that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgement, necessity and statements that are contrary to fact. ...
In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ...
Uses of the to-infinitive The to-infinitive is used in a great many different contexts: - It can serve as an ordinary noun, 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 serve as an adjective or adverb, expressing purpose or intent. So, "He is [supposed] to die at noon," or "[In 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"; "[In 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 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?" In linguistics, a gerund is a kind of verbal noun. ...
The infinitives of auxiliary verbs The modal auxiliary verbs, such as can and may, 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." The English modal auxiliary verbs are will and would shall and should may and might can and could must ought to Modal auxiliary verbs help other verbs express a meaning or an idea but have no meaning by themselves. ...
Perhaps by analogy, the dummy auxiliary verb do is not used in the 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, "I asked not to have to." 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 tenses are verb tenses showing actions completed at or before a specific time. ...
In grammar, voice is the relationship between the action or state expressed by a verb, and its arguments (subject, object, etc. ...
In English, and sometimes in other languages, the continuous or progressive aspect is an aspect that denotes an incomplete action in progress at a specific time. ...
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 use of zu with infinitives is less frequent than to in English. They can function as nouns in the -en form with a capitalized beginning letter, in which case they are of neuter gender ("das Essen" means the gerund "eating"). In Dutch 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". In Scandinavian languages the n has dropped out and it is -e or -a.
Romance languages Romance infinitives can be used in much the same way as the infinitive is used in English, and they can also sometimes function as masculine nouns. In Spanish and Portuguese, infinitives mostly end in -ar, -er, or -ir. A similar phenomenon also exists in French: infinitives of verbs have the suffixes -er, -ir, -re or -oir. Italian follows a similar pattern, with its infinitives ending in -are, -ere, -ire or -urre.
Formation of the infinitive in Romance languages reflects that of their ancestor, Latin, in which a significant majority of verbs had an infinitive ending with -re (with a varying vowel, called the thematical, preceding it). Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...
Portuguese (and its sister language, Galician) is the only Indo-European language with a personal infinitive, which helps to make infinitive clauses very common. English finite sentences as so that you/she/we have/has/have... would be translated to para poderes/ela poder/podermos... (the subject is dropped very often). Portuguese personal infinitive has only two proper tenses (present and perfect), but other tenses are replaced by periphrastic structures. For instance, although you sing/sang/will sing could be translated to apesar de cantares/teres cantado/ires cantar. Galician (Galego) is a language variety of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia (in the Galician language, Galicia, that is recommended, or Galiza), an autonomous community with the constitutional status of historic nationality and located in northwestern Spain, and in areas in the neighbouring autonomous communities of Asturias...
The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ...
The subject of a sentence is one of the two main parts of a sentence, the other being the predicate. ...
Periphrasis is a figure of speech where the meaning of a word or phrase is expressed by many or several words. ...
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 *могть → мочь "can". Some other Slavic languages have the infinitive typically ending in -ć. The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia. ...
Hebrew language 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 is identical in its meaning to 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 such English pleonasms 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. Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by 6 million people mainly in Israel, parts of the Palestinian territories, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ...
Note, however, that the to-infinitive of Hebrew is not the dictionary form; that is the third person singular past tense.
Finnish language To form the first infinitive, the strong form of the root (without consonant gradation or epenthetic 'e') is used, and these changes occur: Consonant gradation is a linguistic term for the changing of consonants. ...
- 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. In linguistics, a language is said to possess vowel harmony (also metaphony) when it has a phonological rule that requires all vowels in a word to belong to a single class. ...
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.
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 phrase "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) or urīdu kitābata kitābin (literally "I want the writing of a book", with the masdar or verbal noun), and in Demotic Arabic biddi aktob iktāb (subordinate clause with verb in subjunctive). Similarly, the modern Greek for "I want to write", as opposed to the ancient Greek θέλω γραφεῖν with the infinitive, is θέλω να γράψω, which is literally "I want that I should write". 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. ...
The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that is subjective, from the persons viewpoint, that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgement, necessity and statements that are contrary to fact. ...
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