Infinitive
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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. In some languages the infinitive can be construed as a verbal noun.
The infinitive is often used as the "citation form", as for many languages this is the basic lemma form of a verb which is usually presented in dictionaries. In language classes where this is the case, students are sometimes taught to think of it as the "name" of the verb.
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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. (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 some grammarians hold that it should not be separated from the main word of the infinitive. (See split infinitive.)
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.
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:
- Apart from in dictionary lemmata, the full infinitive is the most commonly used citation form of the English verb: "How do we conjugate the verb to go?"
- 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?"
The infinitive with auxiliary verbs
The auxiliary verb do is not used with 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, 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
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. 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 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, often expressing abstractions of the action, in which case they are of neuter gender: "das Essen" means the "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.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), that admits the present form "is", and the verb "hê" (to have), whose present form is "het".
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).
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 teres/ela ter/termos... (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 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 (e. g. in Polish), -ť (e. g. in Slovak), -t (formerly -ti in Czech). However, Bulgarian and Macedonian have lost the infinitive. Serbo-Croatian officially retains it but the infinitive is dying out in Serbia.
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 English cognate object 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 language
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.
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 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".
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
cv:Инфинитив da:Infinitiv de:Infinitiv eo:Infinitivo fr:Infinitif nl:Infinitief ja:不定詞 no:Infinitiv nn:Infinitiv pl:Bezokolicznik ru:Инфинитив simple:Infinitive fi:Infinitiivi sv:Infinitiv zh:动词不定式