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Currently, the lead text is rather vague, and yet manages to contradict itself. I think the problem is that the term infinitive is used differently in discussing different languages. For example, most languages AFAIK have only impersonal infinitives, but Portuguese (apparently? Indeed! Velho) has personal infinitives; in most languages AFAIK, infinitives are verbs' "dictionary forms," but some languages have no infinitives, and Hebrew has them but uses the third-person masculine singular past indicative for dictionaries; in most languages AFAIK, an infinitive cannot be cannot be a "main verb," but French allows the infinitive to double as a sort of abstract imperative in signs/postings; and so on.
I don't think there's a universal definition of the term that applies to its (commonly accepted) uses in all languages; therefore, I think the solution is to give a first sentence that explains that the term describes similar but distinct forms in different languages and introduces a list of features of infinitives that are common among many language (together with notes on deviations from these commonalities).
It's probably also worth noting - though perhaps not in the lead text - when non-infinitive verb forms share these features; for example, English has a "gerund" form that acts the same as many other languages' infinitives, and that is indeed interchangeable (or almost interchangeable) with English's infinitive in some contexts (e.g., "I saw him run" vs. "I saw him running").
Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter? Ruakh 07:40, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Then what makes them "finite"?...
BTW, these latest indentations were not my doing. FilipeS 16:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, but any inflection of a verb can be used in a finite sentence. At least, from my limited experience with languages.
As for being inflected for aspect, I think it can be argued that the same happens with the non-finite forms of Portuguese and English, for example. FilipeS 18:18, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Hey, shouldn't you say something about my "proposals" for a definition of infinitive? Velho 18:55, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I hadn't realised there were any. Where are they? FilipeS 19:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Wait, I get it now:
"On the other hand" is better. It is clearer now, although there is still a contradiction with the first sentence:
Here's a question: why did the Romans call it the "infinitive"? FilipeS 21:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible that there simply is no general definition of an infinitive? I mean, I'm pretty sure that if English were some newly-discovered language that linguists were first characterizing, they'd label our gerund as a kind of infinitive. And with Portuguese, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't label its personal infinitive as an infinitive at all. I stand by my original proposal, which is to explain that the word infinitive means different things in different languages, give some features of infinitives that are common in most languages, and discuss variations on such. Ruakh 21:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
And perhaps different things for linguists and in traditional grammar... FilipeS 22:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
My thoughts on your reflections above, Velho...
It seems that there are two different concepts of "infinitive" (at least):
Why not discuss both in the article?
Another thing is that, particularly judging from your comment nr. 6, you are regarding the "infinitive" as an essentially syntactic concept ("It's part of a noun clause, ergo it's an infinitive"). That may be a useful perspective for those who study language from a linguistic point of view, but it seems to me that language learners are likely to be more interested in seeing the infinitive as a morphological category ("How many different forms of this verb-thingy do I have to memorize, and which is the simplest?") FilipeS 18:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Honestly, after our conversation, I don't think I'm qualified to do that. :o FilipeS 16:32, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Here's my proposed lead text:
Then I figured the sections on individual languages could mention the ways they deviate from this list.
What do y'all think?
Ruakh 02:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
It seems like the right direction to take, but I have a few comments:
Tone this down a little bit. Quite a few languages use infinitives as imperatives. (I know that according to Velho that makes them not-real-infinitives, but still...) I suggest "They do not serve as the only verb of a sentence."
Tone this down, as well. Infinitive = name of the verb is actually a very modern-Western-European notion. In classical Greek and classical Latin, for example, verbs were named by the first person of the present tense (amo, canto, etc.) Besides, some languages have no infinitive at all.
How are you going to distinguish infinitives from gerunds and participles?... FilipeS 18:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Replying to both Velho and FilipeS at once:
Re: "I just think that we should say that an infinitive can have a subject [...]": my text already does say that: "They are not inflected to agree with any subject, and their subject, if they have one, is not case-marked as such."
Re: the problems with Non-finite verb: I agree, and that really must be fixed, but I don't see that that affects this article.
Re: languages that use infinitives as imperatives: How about, "They cannot serve as the only verb of a declarative sentence"?
Re: the infinitive being the name of the verb: Well, how common is it? If >50% of languages with infinitives use them as lemmata, then given all the disclaimers surrounding the list, I think it's valid to include it without comment. If not, then I suppose it can be tacked on afterward in its own paragraph or something.
Re: Distinguishing from gerunds and participles: Unless someone can find a source that explains the difference cross-linguistically, I don't think we can really draw that distinction ourselves.
Ruakh 20:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, since we seem to be agreed that this text is better than what was there before, I've instated it (after incorporating some of the changes the two of you suggested). Further changes are of course welcome; I just figured that since the previous text was obviously bad, we might as well replace it as soon as possible and make further improvements afterward. Ruakh 03:15, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
It's great! Now I think it could be useful to have a first section (after introduction) called "Infinitives and their definition across languages" stating how each of the general "properties" can not be applied in some languages. I'll do it today or tomorrow. Velho 18:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Infinitive is also the name of a management consulting company based in the DC Metropolitan area (US). www.infinitive.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.183.210.226 ( talk) 18:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC).
"These are the only Indo-European languages that allow infinitives to take person and number endings. " This is not true. in NIA (New-Indo-Arian) such as Hindi, the infinitive can be inflected for gender, case etc. As in "jaane ke liye" (from the infinitive Jaana - To Go, Jaane - oblique case) or "meri jaani ho cuka hai" (Jaani for female gender). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.1.118.212 ( talk • contribs) 10:35, 16 June 2007 (UTC).
This seems to be able to take both the bare and full infinitive. To my mind anyway, both of these seem grammatically correct and mean the same thing:
He dares oppose us. He dares to oppose us.
Now, my source for the direct quote of the first is from C&C3: Kane's Wrath (level 2 or 3 I think), so I don't know if the writers used bad grammer, but it was definitely "He dares oppose" and not "He dare oppose" as the article on modal auxillary verbs suggests. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.245.148 ( talk) 01:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
From the article: "...the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, does and to do, is and to be, and so on are infinitives."
I don't see how 'does,' or 'is' are infinitives. They are the third person singular form of the verb "to do" and "to be." (he/she/it does/is)
I think the intro could be better written along the lines of: "The infinitive form of a verb carries no inflectional information of the person, or number of any subject that may (or not) be involved; nor the mood, voice, or tense of the verb itself." It's short, sweet, and is true of all languages.
An old Hellenic languages section was placed within comment tags so that it was invisible, and a new In Greek section was created. I've merged the two, but now the section is kind of a mess. Is there anyone who knows how the Modern Greek infinitives developed and how they are used and who can clean the section up? I'm familiar with Ancient Greek, but at a loss with regard to Modern Greek. — Eru· tuon 22:32, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
The 2nd paragraph of the intro of this article is a laundry list of properties that "most" infinitives have "most" of. Isn't it true that, in most languages that have infinitives, the infinitive of a transitive verb can take an object? Eldin raigmore ( talk) 21:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Eldin raigmore ( talk) 21:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Much of the article, and the comments here, are written as though there were a 'thing' which has the name 'infinitive'. Actually, linguistic terminology, like scientific terminology, arises from and is embedded in theories about language. English used to be described as if it were a language like Classical Latin or Greek; in this framework, an English 'infinitive' is whatever seems to be analogous to an infinitive in those languages. It's questionable whether 'infinitive' is a useful term at all in a truly stand-alone description of modern English. If it is, the case needs to be made purely in terms of modern English, and not by reference to other languages.
A similar argument applies to modern Greek. To call the form of the verb which is used after the auxiliary έχω (to form various tenses which didn't exist in classical Greek) an 'infinitive' is hard to justify by any definition. The form can't be used anywhere else, which is quite uncharacteristic of infinitives.
More generally, the entire article is grossly under-referenced. Inline citations are needed all over it to demonstrate that editors are not just expressing their pet views. Peter coxhead ( talk) 19:22, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
Can someone who is knowledgable of Greek phonetics add the IPA transcription where it needs to be? It's quite unprofessional to not include IPA transcriptions. Not everyone reads Greek, and using only Greek without phonetic transcription (and I mean *real* phonetic transcription, not Romanization) makes that part of the article inaccessible to non-experts.
14.53.183.65 ( talk) 01:19, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
The article says:
Does Portuguese have any kind of non-periphrastic aspect marking in infinitives? 143.54.6.199 ( talk) 19:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
I have reverted some edits by Capnprep. I'll address a few of his concerns:
1. Do as aspectual auxiliary. This is the only function of DO as an auxiliary verb and is its primary function within the language. The non-durational aspects in English (everything not progressive/continuous aspects) are marked by the aspectual auxiliary DO followed by its subordinate in bare form. English has two aspectual auxiliaries, DO & BE.
2. Do is not a modal auxiliary. It does not express emphasis / emphatic mood. Rather, DO when used as an aspectual auxiliary may be emphasized just like any other word in a sentence. There is no emphatic modal auxiliary in English. English simply uses vocal stress (or in type, boldface or ALL CAPS) to emphasize the desired element.
3. Perfection / perfecting auxiliary is valid. Perfect is not an aspect but rather a verb in any aspect may be perfected. Perfection is a grammatical category used to express completeness of a verb.
4. I have changed the repeated phrasing "Most auxiliaries" / "Most modals" to ...some... because this sort of generalisation is simply untrue and unfounded. If anything, of the modal auxiliaries, those that subordinate to infinitive form are at best in approximately 50% distribution to those that do not.
5. In the discussion of the various forms following make, I have once again removed the claim for passive voice. That usage is not in passive voice at all as BE is not acting as a vocal auxiliary but rather BE+MADE is acting as a single unit forming a modal auxiliary. Whereas MAKE as a modal auxiliary conveys internal force and subordinates to bare form, BE+MADE expresses external force and subordinates to infinitive form.
6. Within the section on defective verbs I have eliminated some poor and misleading examples while rewording others. That section comes close to conflating infintives with infinitive form and as worded was misleading.
Please do not revert any of these changes without first addressing and resolving these points here on the talk page. Drew.ward ( talk) 07:25, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
Why in the bar at the bottom of the article there is not the subjunctive mode for verbs? -- Dejudicibus ( talk) 18:26, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
English usages such as "I want him to stop" or "For them to arrive on time, they'll have to leave now." illustrate the rule or principle that when an infinitive has a subject, the subject should be in the oblique (a.k.a. objective or accusative) case rather than the nominative (subjective) case ordinarily used in finite verb constructions such as "He stopped." I added this fact to the English language section of the Infinitive article, but wonder how widespread this rule is in other languages. I vaguely recall an analogous rule for Latin, that the infinitive takes a subject in the accusative rather than the nominative case. In English, usages such as "I want him to stop" are somewhat clouded by possible ambiguity as to whether "him" is the subject of "to stop" or the object of "want", with the infinitive "to stop" functioning adjectivally as a modifier of "him." However I think the second parsing is less reasonable. I am at best an amateur grammarian; attention from an expert, both in English and other languages, would be most welcome. CharlesHBennett ( talk) 00:05, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I added a section mentioning this, and referring to existing articles on Accusative and infinitive and exceptional case-marking which describe the phenomenon in more technical detail. CharlesHBennett ( talk) 04:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Is the Romanian word să not a subordinating conjunction rather than a preposition? If someone can argue that it is indeed a preposition, please let me know. I do not regard myself as an expert in Romanian, but the only grammar I can find agrees with me.
If nobody gets back to me, I shall change the wording. LynwoodF ( talk) 21:37, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
I don't think the article explains cases like "the task to be completed". Not exactly sure how to analyze it, though it seems to be a noun phrase overall. Is the infinitive is acting as an adjective phrase that comes after the noun? Or this is actually a clause with "completed" as the main verb constituent, with the clause overall acting as a noun? -- Beland ( talk) 01:25, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
Unless someone posts a well-reasoned objection, I plan to (1) substitute " canonical form" for " dictionary form" in this article, (2) create a redirect page for canonical form, i.e., as linked to infinitive, (3) route the dictionary form article's link from lemma (morphology) to infinitive, and (4) edit the lemma (morphology) page accordingly re its mentions of dictionary form and canonical form. Somebody, please convince me otherwise or else beat me to it and save me the trouble. -- Kent Dominic·(talk) 16:57, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
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Currently, the lead text is rather vague, and yet manages to contradict itself. I think the problem is that the term infinitive is used differently in discussing different languages. For example, most languages AFAIK have only impersonal infinitives, but Portuguese (apparently? Indeed! Velho) has personal infinitives; in most languages AFAIK, infinitives are verbs' "dictionary forms," but some languages have no infinitives, and Hebrew has them but uses the third-person masculine singular past indicative for dictionaries; in most languages AFAIK, an infinitive cannot be cannot be a "main verb," but French allows the infinitive to double as a sort of abstract imperative in signs/postings; and so on.
I don't think there's a universal definition of the term that applies to its (commonly accepted) uses in all languages; therefore, I think the solution is to give a first sentence that explains that the term describes similar but distinct forms in different languages and introduces a list of features of infinitives that are common among many language (together with notes on deviations from these commonalities).
It's probably also worth noting - though perhaps not in the lead text - when non-infinitive verb forms share these features; for example, English has a "gerund" form that acts the same as many other languages' infinitives, and that is indeed interchangeable (or almost interchangeable) with English's infinitive in some contexts (e.g., "I saw him run" vs. "I saw him running").
Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter? Ruakh 07:40, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Then what makes them "finite"?...
BTW, these latest indentations were not my doing. FilipeS 16:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, but any inflection of a verb can be used in a finite sentence. At least, from my limited experience with languages.
As for being inflected for aspect, I think it can be argued that the same happens with the non-finite forms of Portuguese and English, for example. FilipeS 18:18, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Hey, shouldn't you say something about my "proposals" for a definition of infinitive? Velho 18:55, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I hadn't realised there were any. Where are they? FilipeS 19:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Wait, I get it now:
"On the other hand" is better. It is clearer now, although there is still a contradiction with the first sentence:
Here's a question: why did the Romans call it the "infinitive"? FilipeS 21:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible that there simply is no general definition of an infinitive? I mean, I'm pretty sure that if English were some newly-discovered language that linguists were first characterizing, they'd label our gerund as a kind of infinitive. And with Portuguese, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't label its personal infinitive as an infinitive at all. I stand by my original proposal, which is to explain that the word infinitive means different things in different languages, give some features of infinitives that are common in most languages, and discuss variations on such. Ruakh 21:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
And perhaps different things for linguists and in traditional grammar... FilipeS 22:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
My thoughts on your reflections above, Velho...
It seems that there are two different concepts of "infinitive" (at least):
Why not discuss both in the article?
Another thing is that, particularly judging from your comment nr. 6, you are regarding the "infinitive" as an essentially syntactic concept ("It's part of a noun clause, ergo it's an infinitive"). That may be a useful perspective for those who study language from a linguistic point of view, but it seems to me that language learners are likely to be more interested in seeing the infinitive as a morphological category ("How many different forms of this verb-thingy do I have to memorize, and which is the simplest?") FilipeS 18:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Honestly, after our conversation, I don't think I'm qualified to do that. :o FilipeS 16:32, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Here's my proposed lead text:
Then I figured the sections on individual languages could mention the ways they deviate from this list.
What do y'all think?
Ruakh 02:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
It seems like the right direction to take, but I have a few comments:
Tone this down a little bit. Quite a few languages use infinitives as imperatives. (I know that according to Velho that makes them not-real-infinitives, but still...) I suggest "They do not serve as the only verb of a sentence."
Tone this down, as well. Infinitive = name of the verb is actually a very modern-Western-European notion. In classical Greek and classical Latin, for example, verbs were named by the first person of the present tense (amo, canto, etc.) Besides, some languages have no infinitive at all.
How are you going to distinguish infinitives from gerunds and participles?... FilipeS 18:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Replying to both Velho and FilipeS at once:
Re: "I just think that we should say that an infinitive can have a subject [...]": my text already does say that: "They are not inflected to agree with any subject, and their subject, if they have one, is not case-marked as such."
Re: the problems with Non-finite verb: I agree, and that really must be fixed, but I don't see that that affects this article.
Re: languages that use infinitives as imperatives: How about, "They cannot serve as the only verb of a declarative sentence"?
Re: the infinitive being the name of the verb: Well, how common is it? If >50% of languages with infinitives use them as lemmata, then given all the disclaimers surrounding the list, I think it's valid to include it without comment. If not, then I suppose it can be tacked on afterward in its own paragraph or something.
Re: Distinguishing from gerunds and participles: Unless someone can find a source that explains the difference cross-linguistically, I don't think we can really draw that distinction ourselves.
Ruakh 20:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, since we seem to be agreed that this text is better than what was there before, I've instated it (after incorporating some of the changes the two of you suggested). Further changes are of course welcome; I just figured that since the previous text was obviously bad, we might as well replace it as soon as possible and make further improvements afterward. Ruakh 03:15, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
It's great! Now I think it could be useful to have a first section (after introduction) called "Infinitives and their definition across languages" stating how each of the general "properties" can not be applied in some languages. I'll do it today or tomorrow. Velho 18:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Infinitive is also the name of a management consulting company based in the DC Metropolitan area (US). www.infinitive.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.183.210.226 ( talk) 18:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC).
"These are the only Indo-European languages that allow infinitives to take person and number endings. " This is not true. in NIA (New-Indo-Arian) such as Hindi, the infinitive can be inflected for gender, case etc. As in "jaane ke liye" (from the infinitive Jaana - To Go, Jaane - oblique case) or "meri jaani ho cuka hai" (Jaani for female gender). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.1.118.212 ( talk • contribs) 10:35, 16 June 2007 (UTC).
This seems to be able to take both the bare and full infinitive. To my mind anyway, both of these seem grammatically correct and mean the same thing:
He dares oppose us. He dares to oppose us.
Now, my source for the direct quote of the first is from C&C3: Kane's Wrath (level 2 or 3 I think), so I don't know if the writers used bad grammer, but it was definitely "He dares oppose" and not "He dare oppose" as the article on modal auxillary verbs suggests. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.245.148 ( talk) 01:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
From the article: "...the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, does and to do, is and to be, and so on are infinitives."
I don't see how 'does,' or 'is' are infinitives. They are the third person singular form of the verb "to do" and "to be." (he/she/it does/is)
I think the intro could be better written along the lines of: "The infinitive form of a verb carries no inflectional information of the person, or number of any subject that may (or not) be involved; nor the mood, voice, or tense of the verb itself." It's short, sweet, and is true of all languages.
An old Hellenic languages section was placed within comment tags so that it was invisible, and a new In Greek section was created. I've merged the two, but now the section is kind of a mess. Is there anyone who knows how the Modern Greek infinitives developed and how they are used and who can clean the section up? I'm familiar with Ancient Greek, but at a loss with regard to Modern Greek. — Eru· tuon 22:32, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
The 2nd paragraph of the intro of this article is a laundry list of properties that "most" infinitives have "most" of. Isn't it true that, in most languages that have infinitives, the infinitive of a transitive verb can take an object? Eldin raigmore ( talk) 21:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Eldin raigmore ( talk) 21:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Much of the article, and the comments here, are written as though there were a 'thing' which has the name 'infinitive'. Actually, linguistic terminology, like scientific terminology, arises from and is embedded in theories about language. English used to be described as if it were a language like Classical Latin or Greek; in this framework, an English 'infinitive' is whatever seems to be analogous to an infinitive in those languages. It's questionable whether 'infinitive' is a useful term at all in a truly stand-alone description of modern English. If it is, the case needs to be made purely in terms of modern English, and not by reference to other languages.
A similar argument applies to modern Greek. To call the form of the verb which is used after the auxiliary έχω (to form various tenses which didn't exist in classical Greek) an 'infinitive' is hard to justify by any definition. The form can't be used anywhere else, which is quite uncharacteristic of infinitives.
More generally, the entire article is grossly under-referenced. Inline citations are needed all over it to demonstrate that editors are not just expressing their pet views. Peter coxhead ( talk) 19:22, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
Can someone who is knowledgable of Greek phonetics add the IPA transcription where it needs to be? It's quite unprofessional to not include IPA transcriptions. Not everyone reads Greek, and using only Greek without phonetic transcription (and I mean *real* phonetic transcription, not Romanization) makes that part of the article inaccessible to non-experts.
14.53.183.65 ( talk) 01:19, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
The article says:
Does Portuguese have any kind of non-periphrastic aspect marking in infinitives? 143.54.6.199 ( talk) 19:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
I have reverted some edits by Capnprep. I'll address a few of his concerns:
1. Do as aspectual auxiliary. This is the only function of DO as an auxiliary verb and is its primary function within the language. The non-durational aspects in English (everything not progressive/continuous aspects) are marked by the aspectual auxiliary DO followed by its subordinate in bare form. English has two aspectual auxiliaries, DO & BE.
2. Do is not a modal auxiliary. It does not express emphasis / emphatic mood. Rather, DO when used as an aspectual auxiliary may be emphasized just like any other word in a sentence. There is no emphatic modal auxiliary in English. English simply uses vocal stress (or in type, boldface or ALL CAPS) to emphasize the desired element.
3. Perfection / perfecting auxiliary is valid. Perfect is not an aspect but rather a verb in any aspect may be perfected. Perfection is a grammatical category used to express completeness of a verb.
4. I have changed the repeated phrasing "Most auxiliaries" / "Most modals" to ...some... because this sort of generalisation is simply untrue and unfounded. If anything, of the modal auxiliaries, those that subordinate to infinitive form are at best in approximately 50% distribution to those that do not.
5. In the discussion of the various forms following make, I have once again removed the claim for passive voice. That usage is not in passive voice at all as BE is not acting as a vocal auxiliary but rather BE+MADE is acting as a single unit forming a modal auxiliary. Whereas MAKE as a modal auxiliary conveys internal force and subordinates to bare form, BE+MADE expresses external force and subordinates to infinitive form.
6. Within the section on defective verbs I have eliminated some poor and misleading examples while rewording others. That section comes close to conflating infintives with infinitive form and as worded was misleading.
Please do not revert any of these changes without first addressing and resolving these points here on the talk page. Drew.ward ( talk) 07:25, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
Why in the bar at the bottom of the article there is not the subjunctive mode for verbs? -- Dejudicibus ( talk) 18:26, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
English usages such as "I want him to stop" or "For them to arrive on time, they'll have to leave now." illustrate the rule or principle that when an infinitive has a subject, the subject should be in the oblique (a.k.a. objective or accusative) case rather than the nominative (subjective) case ordinarily used in finite verb constructions such as "He stopped." I added this fact to the English language section of the Infinitive article, but wonder how widespread this rule is in other languages. I vaguely recall an analogous rule for Latin, that the infinitive takes a subject in the accusative rather than the nominative case. In English, usages such as "I want him to stop" are somewhat clouded by possible ambiguity as to whether "him" is the subject of "to stop" or the object of "want", with the infinitive "to stop" functioning adjectivally as a modifier of "him." However I think the second parsing is less reasonable. I am at best an amateur grammarian; attention from an expert, both in English and other languages, would be most welcome. CharlesHBennett ( talk) 00:05, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I added a section mentioning this, and referring to existing articles on Accusative and infinitive and exceptional case-marking which describe the phenomenon in more technical detail. CharlesHBennett ( talk) 04:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Is the Romanian word să not a subordinating conjunction rather than a preposition? If someone can argue that it is indeed a preposition, please let me know. I do not regard myself as an expert in Romanian, but the only grammar I can find agrees with me.
If nobody gets back to me, I shall change the wording. LynwoodF ( talk) 21:37, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
I don't think the article explains cases like "the task to be completed". Not exactly sure how to analyze it, though it seems to be a noun phrase overall. Is the infinitive is acting as an adjective phrase that comes after the noun? Or this is actually a clause with "completed" as the main verb constituent, with the clause overall acting as a noun? -- Beland ( talk) 01:25, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
Unless someone posts a well-reasoned objection, I plan to (1) substitute " canonical form" for " dictionary form" in this article, (2) create a redirect page for canonical form, i.e., as linked to infinitive, (3) route the dictionary form article's link from lemma (morphology) to infinitive, and (4) edit the lemma (morphology) page accordingly re its mentions of dictionary form and canonical form. Somebody, please convince me otherwise or else beat me to it and save me the trouble. -- Kent Dominic·(talk) 16:57, 5 May 2022 (UTC)