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Are there languages without non-finite verb forms at all?
Inuit (Greenlandic)
My Greenlandic is rudimentary at best, but as far as I can recall from my uni classes many years back, Greenlandic (and I believe other Inuit) verbs have only finite forms. The ...
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Infinitive verbs in syntax tree
This answer is based on chapter 2 (section 8: "Infinitival to) of Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the structure of English by Andrew Radford (2004), and "Auxiliaries: To's company" (2012) by Robert ...
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Infinitive Marker
It turns out, "parts of speech" are one of those formalisms that's taught in all the schools, but isn't always useful when you start looking closer.
Fundamentally, "part of speech" is a word's role ...
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Outside of English, is there a difference between noun infinitives and gerunds?
It's hard to say, because outside of language-specific traditions (especially English and Latin), "gerund" is not a clearly-defined part of speech. For example, in Bantu languages, there is a clearly-...
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What do "finite" and "non-finite" mean in linguistics?
In traditional grammar a finite form of a verb is a fully specified verb form according to all verbal categories relevant to the specific language, like voice, aspect, mood, tense, person, or number.
...
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What sort of "root" patterns do languages have that don't have infinitive verbs?
Bulgarian has no infinitive and uses 1p. sg. present indicative form (“I do”) for citation purposes:
правя [ˈpravʲə] ‘to do’, but in fact it is “I do / I am doing”
Arabic has no infinitives, either, ...
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Does this sentence violate Principle A of Binding Theory?
I'd personally say "no," for a few reasons. The first, if you take the idea that it is a different binding domain, and try to see if it could fit with principal B, then "John(i) wanted to buy him(i) a ...
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Is to always a preposition?
Historically, the two used to be the same. In other words, the English "TO-infinitive" started out as the preposition "to" plus a verbal noun; compare the Latin infinitive, which is derived from a ...
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What sort of "root" patterns do languages have that don't have infinitive verbs?
The stem of a verb is not, in general, the same as the infinitive, and in many languages, more than one principal part is needed to derive all forms of the verb
This is in fact the case in Latin and ...
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Are there some languages that do not have infinitives/participles/gerunds?
So are there some languages that do not use verbs directly to form nouns, adjectives, or adverbs by means of transforming the verb into an infinitive, participle, gerund, or similar such aspect of ...
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How do you assign Case to sentences with an infinitval clause?
Though BillJ is right in saying that full NPs have no case in English, I think your question would become valid if we replace the full NPs with personal pronouns:
For me to attack him would be ...
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Infinitive clauses referring to an adjective before a noun
(the question should be on ELU or ELL)
In the first group (both sides), the infinitive action is done by the subject.
In the second group (right side), the infinitive action is done by the main ...
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subject of a to-infinitive - is it a nominative or an accusative?
The easiest way to test this is to swap in a word that shows case-marking overtly.
*The man kept the door open for they to enter the room.
The man kept the door open for them to enter the room.
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Inherent inflection vs. Contextual inflection
Based on that description, I would also think the infinitive is morphologically required by the surrounding context. But I'll try to make an argument for the opposite view.
In syntax, I've heard these ...
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How do you write split infinitives in x-bar theory syntax trees?
The word "to" is seen as occupying the INFL / T° slot. The adverb is an adjunct somewhere to the left of the V. This derives the order you see.
(It's actually very easy isn't it.)
(Of course,...
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What sort of "root" patterns do languages have that don't have infinitive verbs?
It sounds like what you're looking for isn't an infinitive, but a citation form, or a set of principal parts.
The "citation form" of a lemma is, basically, the form you look up in a ...
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Finite Nominalised Clauses
I can only answer for your general question. If we define the difference between a finite clause and a non-finite clause by the fact that the non-finite clause does not include subject whereas for the ...
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One usage of infinitive clause
The example sentence is okay, and in his comments, Lawler has explained why. To restate the matter, you have assumed the continuity of the parts of your example. It is usually a good assumption to ...
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One usage of infinitive clause
First, the example sentence is jarring because 'a few' can mean anything from 'only a small amount' to 'some'. I would expect to read 'few opportunities exist' instead (although I would doubt its ...
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Looking for the name of research area *my brother helps me (to) translate*
The example is a classical linguistic question with the canonical example phrase "help him (to) write" (for an overview and more references, see, e.g., Pinson (2015)), but it is not a named ...
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Criteria to distinguish finite from nonfinite complement clauses?
Though of course more language-specific information is needed, general criteria do exist. The finiteness of a clause is basically how non-nominalised it is (Givón, 2001), and, as is well known, the '...
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