Infinitive Mood
The infinitive mood is a verb form that typically appears with the word "to" in English, such as "to walk" or "to eat." It is used to express an action or state without indicating the subject, tense, or aspect. In some languages, the infinitive can also function as a noun or be modified by adverbs.
5 Key excerpts on "Infinitive Mood"
eBook - ePub- Goold Brown(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Perlego(Publisher)
...In the nature of things, however, all being, action, or passion, not contemplated abstractly as a thing, belongs to something that is, or acts, or is acted upon. Accordingly infinitives have, in most instances, a reference to some subject of this kind; though their grammatical dependence connects them more frequently with some other term. The Infinitive Mood, in English, is distinguished by the preposition to; which, with a few exceptions, immediately precedes it, and may be said to govern it. In dictionaries, and grammars, to is often used as a mere index, to distinguish verbs from the other parts of speech. But this little word has no more claim to be ranked as a part of the verb, than has the conjunction if, which is the sign of the subjunctive. It is the nature of a preposition, to show the relation of different things, thoughts, or words, to each other; and this "sign of the infinitive" may well be pursued separately as a preposition, since in most instances it manifestly shows the relation between the infinitive verb and some other term. Besides, by most of our grammarians, the present tense of the Infinitive Mood is declared to be the radical form of the verb; but this doctrine must be plainly untrue, upon the supposition that this tense is a compound. OBS. 2.—The Indicative mood is so called because its chief use is, to indicate, or declare positively, whatever one wishes to say. It is that form of the verb, which we always employ when we affirm or deny any thing in a direct and independent manner. It is more frequently used, and has a greater number of tenses, than any other mood; and is also, in our language, the only one in which the principal verb is varied in termination. It is not, however, on all occasions, confined to its primary use; else it would be simply and only declarative. But we use it sometimes interrogatively, sometimes conditionally; and each of these uses is different from a simple declaration...
eBook - ePubMorphology and Universals in Syntactic Change
Evidence from Medieval and Modern Greek
- Brian D. Joseph(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 2 The History of the Infinitive in Greek In this chapter, various aspects of the historical development of the infinitive in Greek are discussed. One of the most striking differences between Modern Greek and earlier stages of Greek, e.g. Classical or Biblical, is the fact that whereas in earlier Greek, infinitives abounded in a variety of functions (see §2.1), in Modern Greek, these forms are severely restricted in both use and number. The extent of this restriction is so great that Modern Greek is commonly called a language which completely lacks this verbal category. 1 / A This does not mean that the finite/non-finite distinction for verbs was lost, only that the distribution of this distinction changed--in Chapter 7, it is shown that Modern Greek still has this distinction. The following working definition of an infinitive is assumed throughout this thesis: B an infinitive is a verbal form which is non-finite, showing no markings for either the person or number of the subject of the action it expresses. Furthermore, the infinitive can be characterized in terms of typical syntactic functions it serves, 2 such as its occurrence in certain complement constructions, especially as the complement to verbs and adjectives, in the expression of purpose, and so forth. These two parameters--non-finiteness and syntactic function--serve to distinguish the Greek infinitive from other verbal forms in the language. Moreover, as far as Greek is concerned, these forms which were not marked for person or number also carried no overt marking for tense. With the exception of the future infinitive, which in Classical Greek was regularly used only to represent the future indicative in indirect discourse, 3 the different forms of the Ancient Greek infinitive did not have regular uses in which each corresponded to a particular tense. As Smyth (1920: 413) writes: The tenses of the... infinitive... do not refer to the differences in kind of time...
eBook - ePub- Peter T Bradley, Ian Mackenzie(Authors)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 17 Infinitive constructions Infinitive forms in Spanish consist of a single, invariable word ending in -ar, -er or -ir. In principle they correspond to English ‘to + verb’, but in addition they often translate forms ending in ‘-ing’. The Spanish infinitive is often used after a preposition or a verb: después de cenar after having supper Quiero hablar. I want to speak. It can also function as the subject of a finite verb (see 17.4) and as a verbal noun (see 17.6). For the infinitive used as an imperative, see 19.3.2. On the placement of object pronouns with infinitives see 8.5.2. 17.1 Finite verb + infinitive 17.1.1 Verbs with the same subject When one verb follows another, the second verb almost always takes the infinitive form if the subject of the first verb is the same as that of the second. This pattern is typical of the modal verbs (see Chapter 16) but is also common with most psychological verbs and also with verbs indicating concepts such as necessity and accomplishment: Prefiero hablar con él. I’d prefer to talk to him. Recuerdo haberlo conocido en Jerez. I remember having met him in Jerez. Necesitamos comprar gasolina. We need to buy petrol. ¿Lograste hacerlo? Did you manage to do it? 17.1.2 Verbs with different subjects A small number of verbs can take a direct infinitive when the subjects of the finite verb and the infinitive are not the same. The main verbs that allow this construction are hacer ‘to...
eBook - ePub- Patrick Joseph Duffley(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Five The infinitive in the English verb system 5.1 THE BARE INFINITIVE’S PLACE IN THE SYSTEM AND THE ROLE OF TO In previous psychomechanical studies, the infinitive has been defined as a quasi-nominal form of the verb evoking its event as not yet realized (cf. Hirtle 1975: 20–1). Its place in the system of the quasi-nominal forms and its relation to the present and past participles is diagrammed as: This diagram can now be made more precise insofar as the infinitive is concerned. The first point to be made is that to is not, strictly speaking, part of the infinitive: the latter is a verb, whereas to is a dematerialized preposition whose use is called for in certain contexts because of the meaning it expresses. 34 The infinitive as such in English, that whose grammatical meaning is generated by the mental mechanisms involved in the system of the verb, corresponds to the so-called ‘bare infinitive’. As for the grammatical meaning of the bare infinitive, the following remarks can be made. First of all, unlike the - ing form, the infinitive always produces a representation of an event seen as a whole, i.e. either as a single instant of a state-like event or as a movement from the beginning limit to the end of an action-like one (cf. Hirtle 1988). As can be observed from the contrast between I saw him swim/swimming across the river, the infinitive refuses a partial view of an action-like event as intercepted midway between the beginning and the end. This does not entail however, as Hirtle 1975 seems to suggest, that the infinitive must represent an event as referred to some point in time prior to its realization: if such were the case, it would be impossible to explain why to is needed in some contexts but not in others...
- Hans-Jorg Busch(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...7 The function or systematic grammatical meaning of the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods in Spanish By defining moods as the formal and systematic manifestations of modality, they are characterized as grammatical structures with a general modal meaning. This meaning cannot be explained in philosophical, semantic or pragmatic terms, but as a notion that corresponds to all the specific systematic manifestation in the language. Neither can it be defined as triggered by the meaning of other elements or just as the product of distribution rules. 7.1 The formal distinction between indicative and subjunctive in Spanish The basic mood in Spanish is the indicative. Its verb endings and uses distinguish it from the subjunctive and the imperative. The formal distinction between the present indicative and subjunctive is minimal. It is just based on the distinction between the phonemes versus allophones /a/, /e/ and /i/. The same goes for the difference between the imperfect and the imperfect subjunctive (past subjunctive) of regular -ar verbs that are only distinguished by the phonemes [b] and [r]. This is similar to how we use phonemes to distinguish words with different meaning, such as fAn and fUn, bOOt and bOAt, haPPy and HaRRy, etc. Therefore, it is important for teachers to train their students to hear the phonetic difference between [a] and [e] and to point out the importance of this phonological distinction in the Spanish language. The subjunctive paradigm is in many ways more limited and restricted when compared to the indicative: There are only two simple subjunctive conjugations – if we ignore the differences between the two imperfect subjunctive forms hablara/hablase : 1 the present and past subjunctive...
