Infinitive

Infinitive – Contrastive Grammar – Part 1

Reference:

1.       Lai Tung Leung, New Contrastive Grammar of English and German (Chinese edition). China, 2006.

2.       Wheelock, F. M. Wheelock's Latin. 6^th Ed. HarperCollins, 2000.

3.       Wenham. Elements of N.T. Greek.

4.       Wallace.  Greek Grammar beyond the Basics.

5.       Robertson. A Grammar of The Greek New Testament – In the light of Historical Research.

 

The following FOUR forms are used in different languages under comparison, but they are some other forms (or features) not shared listed in the next table.

 

Tense	Active	Passive
Present	schreiben	geschreiben werden
	To write	To be written
Perfect	geschreiben haben	geschreiben worden sein
	To have written	To have been written

Table 1

 

Greek Infinitive compared with other unique features in other languages

luw	Active	Middle	Passive
Present	luein	luesqai	luesqai
Perfect	lelukenai	lelusqai	lelusqai
Aorist: Greek	lusai	lusasqai	luqhnai
Present Continuous: Eng.	To be writing	-----	-----
Future: Latin	Laudaturus esse	------	Laudatum iri

Table 2

Some observations:

1.       Only Greek has middle voice, which may be used to render reflexivity, active or passive meanings.

2.       Aorist infinitive is unique. Though Aorist may mean a point in the past, but sometimes the infinitive does not convey this fully.

3.       Present Continuous infinitive can only be found in English as a unique form. The same function will be included in the Present Active Infinitive in German or Greek.

4.       Future Infinitive is found only in Latin, but a special pattern of infinitive is used to express the same form in English (though it is a rare usage). [i]

5.       Infinitives can be used as nouns or adverbs in many Indo-European languages.

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[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitive#Impersonal_Constructions There is a specific situation in which the infinitive is used, where it acts almost like an "impersonal future tense", replacing "will". This is done through the construction: to be + "to" + bare infinitive. Grammatically, this is identical to the instructional "I am to wait outside" construction (above), but does not signify somebody having been issued an instruction; rather, it expresses an intended action, in the same way as "will". This "tense" is used extensively in news reports, eg. –

• The Prime Minister is to visit the West Bank (active)
• Aid is to be sent to war-torn Darfur (passive) [2]

This "future infinitive" construction is interesting in that it only has a future aspect to it in situations where the speaker is significantly distanced from the event.[3] In cases where the subject of the sentence is not quite as distanced from the speaker, then the same construction takes on a sense of instruction or necessity (as in "he is to wait outside", or "he is to go to hospital").

The same construction can be used in conditional clauses - If you are to go on holiday, then you need to work hard (or, conversely, if you want to...then you are to...).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitive#Impersonal_Constructions There is a specific situation in which the infinitive is used, where it acts almost like an "impersonal future tense", replacing "will". This is done through the construction: to be + "to" + bare infinitive. Grammatically, this is identical to the instructional "I am to wait outside" construction (above), but does not signify somebody having been issued an instruction; rather, it expresses an intended action, in the same way as "will". This "tense" is used extensively in news reports, eg. –

• The Prime Minister is to visit the West Bank (active)
• Aid is to be sent to war-torn Darfur (passive) [2]

This "future infinitive" construction is interesting in that it only has a future aspect to it in situations where the speaker is significantly distanced from the event.[3] In cases where the subject of the sentence is not quite as distanced from the speaker, then the same construction takes on a sense of instruction or necessity (as in "he is to wait outside", or "he is to go to hospital").

The same construction can be used in conditional clauses - If you are to go on holiday, then you need to work hard (or, conversely, if you want to...then you are to...).