Re: Infinitives

"Joachim Pense" :

I just learned that Old English had two infinitives: "singan" 'to sing'
and "to singenne" 'in order to sing'. the form without "to" later
disappeared.

Wasn't that in an adjectival construction? Eg, "the text to sing", the "to
singenne" text.
Compare the German "participle for infinitive" forms (or what you call
them?;-) as
- "das zu lesendes Magazin",
which always seemed to me are really neither participle nor infinitive, but
then what, unless the notion of gerundivum applies to Germanic...
In Dutch it is used with the infinitive form:
- het te lezen boek, het te kopen artikel...
But as I said, it doesn't have entirely the feel of an infinitive to me, and
in the case of "short" verbs as doen, gaan, zien... one sees -e flection
arise:
- de nog te gane kilometers, niet te overziene gevaren...
which hardly can be called bare infinitives.
(In Dutch, -e flection can be deceivingly imitated by words ending in -en*,
such as verb infinitives, resulting in a "flection-feel" replacing the
initial function of the -en ending)
* final n in -en being very rarely pronounced now, so -en ~ -e.

OTOH, in dialect speech and ancient texts flected infinitives do occur, and
this in both verbal and noun use:
om te zingene en te dansene (in order to, verbal)
het kwam niet tot zingen(e), it didn't get to singing (noun)

I doubt if Trond's suggestion of a dative form would apply to both verbal
and noun cases....

guido google wugi



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