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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. The infinitive is a verbal noun. In foreign language courses, the present simple tense of the infinitive is often referred to as the "dictionary form", as this is the basic lemma form of a verb which is usually presented in dictionaries.
Infinitives in EnglishEnglish 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 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 infinitiveThe bare infinitive is used in a rather limited number of contexts, but some of these are quite common:
Uses of the to-infinitiveThe 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 infinitives of auxiliary verbsThe 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." 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." Germanic languagesThe 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". 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 it is -e or -a. Romance languagesRomance 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). 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/havew/. would be translated to para poderes/ela poder/podermosw/. (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. Slavic languagesThe 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. Hebrew languageHebrew 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. Note, however, that the to-infinitive of Hebrew is not the dictionary form; that is the third person singular past tense. Finnish languageTo form the first infinitive, the strong form of the root (without consonant gradation or epenthetic 'e') is used, and these changes occur:
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. Translation to languages without an infinitiveIn 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". See alsoWhat does Infinitive mean ? Search with Google !Article on Infinitive, category, different spelling or sense |
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