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РЕГИСТРАЦИЯ ЭКСКУРСИЯ

The Infinitive and Its Properties. The categories of the Infinitive.

In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual (traditional) description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to dobe and to be, and so on are infinitives. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition of infinitive that applies to all languages. Many Native American languages and some languages in Africa and Aboriginal Australia simply do not have infinitives or verbal nouns. In their place they use finite verb forms used in ordinary clauses or special constructions.

In languages that have infinitives, they generally have most of the following properties:

  • In most uses, infinitives are non-finite verbs.
  • They function as other lexical categories — usually nouns — within the clauses that contain them, for example by serving as the subject of another verb.
  • They do not represent any of the verb's arguments (as employer andemployee do).
  • They are not inflected to agree with any subject
  • They cannot serve as the only verb of a declarative sentence.
  • They do not have tense, aspect, moods, and/or voice, or they are limited in the range of tenses, aspects, moods, and/or voices that they can use. (In languages where infinitives do not have moods at all, they are usually treated as being their own non-finite mood.)
  • They are used with auxiliary verbs.

However, it bears repeating that none of the above is a defining quality of the infinitive; infinitives do not have all these properties in every language, as it is shown below, and other verb forms may have one or more of them. For example, English gerunds and participles have most of these properties as well.

2. A general outline of functional parts of speech. The preposition. The

conjunction.

Еще вариант infinitive

The Infinitive

Historically, the infinitive is a verbal noun. Hence its double nature: it

combines the features of the verb with those of the noun. It is the form of the verb

which expresses a process in general, i.e. a process that is not restricted (i.e.

concretized) by person, number, tense, and mood. Because of its general process

meaning, the infinitive is treated as the head-form of the whole paradigm of the

verb. 

The infinitive has two presentation forms: marked and unmarked. The

marked infinitive is distinguished by the grammatical word-morpheme to,

historically a preposition. Similar to other grammatical word morphemes, to can be

used to represent the corresponding construction as a whole (e.g. You can read any

of the books if you want to). It can also be separated from its notional part by a

word or phrase, usually of adverbial nature, forming the so-called split infinitive

(e.g. We need your participation, to thoroughly investigate the issue.) The marked

infinitive is an analytic grammatical form. 

The other form of the infinitive is unmarked; it is traditionally called the

bare infinitive. It is used in various analytic forms (non-modal and modal), with

verbs of physical perception, with the verbs let, bid, make, help (optionally), with a

few modal phrases (had better, would rather, would have, etc.), with the relative

why.

The infinitive combines the properties of the verb with those of the noun, as

a result it serves as the verbal name of a process. It has the grammatical categories

of voice, aspect and temporal correlation. Consequently, the categorial paradigm of

the infinitive includes eight forms: the indefinite active, the continuous active, the

perfect active, the perfect continuous active; the indefinite passive, the continuous

passive, the perfect passive, the perfect continuous passive.  

to take — to be taking

to have taken — to have been taking

to be taken —to be being taken 

to have been taken — to have been being taken

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The continuous and perfect continuous passive can only be used

occasionally, with a strong stylistic colouring. It is the indefinite infinitive that

constitues the head-form of the verbal paradigm.

The verbal features of the infinitive. Like the finite form of verb, the

infinitive distinguishes the categories of aspect, voice, and temporal correlation.

The paradigm of the infinitive is determined by the semantico-syntactic

properties of the process. If the process is intransitive, we cannot derive voice

forms

e.g. to walk – to be walking vs. *to be being walked

to have walked – to have been walking vs. *to have been being walked

The nounal features of the infinitive. Semantically and morphologically, the

infinitive is much more similar to the verb than to the noun: its verbal features

outweigh its nounal features. Similar to the noun, the infinitive can be used as the

subject or part of the subject, the predicative, and the attribute.

1. A General Outline of Functional Parts of Speech

According to the criteria of form, meaning and function, all words are

divided into notional and functional, which reflects their division in the earlier

grammatical tradition into changeable and unchangeable. 

Functional words are characterized by incomplete nominative meaning, they

are non-self-dependent and they perform mediatory functions in the sentence. 

On the principle of "generalized form" only unchangeable words are

traditionally treated under the heading of functional parts of speech. As for their

individual forms as such, they are simply presented by the list, since the number of

these words is limited, so that they don’t need to be identified on any general

scheme.

To the basic functional series of words in English belong the article, the

preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal word, the interjection. 

 

2. The Preposition

It is common knowledge that prepositions are a most important element of

the structure of many languages, particularly those which, like Modern English,

have no developed case system in their nominal parts of speech. Prepositions in

English are less closely connected with the word or phrase they introduce than,

say, in Russian. This greater independence of English prepositions manifests itself

in various ways.

Semantic features

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The preposition is traditionally defined as a word expressing relations

between words in the sentence. The weakness of the traditional definition is that it

does not allow us to distinguish prepositions from subordinating conjunctions.

Cf. She never saw him after the concert. vs. She never saw him after he left

town.

In traditional analysis, the preposition is used with the noun phrase, not with

the verb phrase. Such being the case, after in the first sentence is a preposition,

while after in the second sentence is a conjunction. In other words, the status of

after is determined by the linguistic status of the following phrase. Accepting this

approach, we shall have to treat the two uses of after as homonyms.

A new approach to prepositions and subordinating conjunctions is to treat

the two traditional categories as prepositions (Geoffrey K. Pullum and Rodney

Huddleston, 2002: 600). The said scholars include in the preposition category all of

the subordinating conjunctions of traditional grammar with the exception of

whether and that. Prepositions are taken as heads of phrases and are comparable to

verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs which also function as heads. This approach

to prepositions makes it possible to combine prepositions and subordinating

conjunctions into one class and thus solve the problem of the discrimination of

prepositions and conjunctions. 

Sometimes the boundary line between a preposition and another part of

speech is not quite clear. Thus, with reference to the words like near there may be

doubtful cases from this viewpoint. For instance, there certainly is the adjective

near, used in such phrases as the near future. On the other hand, there is the

preposition near, found in such sentences as They live near me.

Functionally, prepositions can be divided into grammatical, and non-

grammatical (the latter are subdivided into spatial and non-spatial). 

Grammatical prepositions have no identifiable meaning independent of the

grammatical construction in which they occur. Consider: 

1. He was interviewed by the police.

2. They were discussing the speech of the President. 

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3. She sent the letter to John.

In all these examples the prepositions have no identifiable meaning of their

own: it is only in the co-text that we can say what meaning they express. In (1) by

marks the element that is the Agent; in (2) of marks the possessive relationship

between the speech and the president; in (3) to marks the Recipient. 

In their grammatical functions, prepositions are similar to inflections in

synthetic languages. 

Cf. interviewed by the police: допрошены полицией; 

the speech of the President: речь президента; 

sent to John: отправила Джону.

As already indicated, non-grammatical prepositions can be divided into

spatial and non-spatial, the term spatial including two types of space: non-temporal

and temporal. Spatial non-temporal prepositions mark the position of entities with

respect to each other: one entity is treated as a reference point (the deictic centre)

with respect to which another is located. 

Morphological features

Structurally, prepositions fall into two categories: simple, or one-word,

prepositions (in, on, for, to, about, after, etc.) and composite, or two- or threeword,

prepositions (ahead of, because of, according to; by means of, at the cost of, with

reference to, etc.).

However, not all scholars recognize the existence of composite prepositions.

According to Prof. Ilyish, we cannot term these groups prepositions, since a

preposition is a word, not a word group, and it is essential to keep up the

distinction between words and word groups. The term "compound preposition" is

too vague and is not conducive to a clear and consistent grammatical theory.

Syntactic features 

As far as phrases are concerned, the function of prepositions is to connect

words with each other. On the sentence level: a preposition is never a part of a

sentence by itself; it enters the part of sentence whose main centre is the following

noun, or pronoun, or gerund. It won’t be correct to say that prepositions connect

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parts of a sentence. They do not do that, as they stand within a part of the sentence,

not between two parts.

 

3. The Conjunction

Semantic features

Every conjunction has its own meaning, expressing some connection or

other existing between phenomena in extralinguistic reality.

When discussing prepositions, we noted that in a certain number of cases the

use of a given preposition is predicted by the preceding word: thus the verb depend

can only be followed by the preposition on (or upon), the adjective characteristic

only by the preposition of, etc. In such cases the preposition has no meaning of its

own. Conjunctions in this respect are entirely different. Their meaning is

independent of preceding words.

Syntactic features

Two levels are distinguished — that of phrases and that of sentences. 

On the phrase level it must be said that conjunctions connect words and

phrases. It is the so-called co-ordinating conjunctions that are found here, and only

very rarely subordinating ones.

On the sentence level it must be said that conjunctions connect clauses (of

different kinds). Here we find both so-called co-ordinating and so-called

subordinating conjunctions.

In comparing prepositions with co-ordinating and subordinating

conjunctions we cannot fail to notice that while prepositions have nothing in

common with co-ordinating conjunctions, some prepositions are very close in

meaning to subordinating conjunctions, and in some cases a preposition and a

subordinating conjunction sound exactly the same.

It should also be noted that the difference between prepositions and

conjunctions is much less pronounced in Modern English than in Russian, where

prepositions are closely connected with cases, while conjunctions have nothing

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whatever to do with them. In English, with its almost complete absence of cases,

this difference between prepositions and conjunctions is very much obliterated.  


20.06.2014; 00:54
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