Infinitives

Infinitives are one of the three groups of non-finite verbs (also called verbals), the others being gerunds and participles.

We shall look at this particular type of verb from three angles:

1. how it looks (its form or morphology);
2. what work it does in a sentence (its function or syntax); and
3. its meaning (or semantics).

How Can You Recognize an Infinitive?

We can recognize it from its form, which is usually as follows:
to eat, to drink, to play, to be, etc. (with a 'to' before it).

In some cases the word 'to' is dropped. We speak of such a verb (with the word 'to' dropped) as a bare infinitive.

The bare infinitive is the standard form of an English verb.

What Work Does an Infinitive Do?

If we look at the function, that is, the work it does in a sentence, we may consider it to be both a noun and a verb.

The Infinitive As Noun and Verb

Here is an example:

I like to finish the work quickly.

In this sentence the phrase to finish does the following jobs:

• It is the object of the finite verb like - therefore to finish is similar to a noun (because being an object is a noun's job).


• The phrase to finish has its own object, work - so to finish is a verb (since verbs have objects).


• The adverb quickly modifies (i.e. tells us something more about) to finish. Since the phrase to finish is modifiable by an adverb, it must be a verb.

We can say that the infinitive, though born in the verb family, does not limit itself to being a verb. It often behaves like a noun when it goes around socializing in the world of sentences!