Karl J Sherlock
Associate Professor, English
Email: karl.sherlock@gcccd.edu
Phone: 619-644-7871
WHAT'S AN INFINITIVE?An infinitive consists of the root of a verb plus the word "to" (called an "infinitive particle"). Beginners confuse the infinitive particle "to" (which should always precede an infinitive) with the preposition "to." The bad news is that they are not related, so writers simply need to make a mental note that there's another word out there spelled t-o, and it means something else. We manage this with plenty of other words: fly; nail; lead; and so on.
As with other verbals, infinitives are like verbs in many ways, but they are not verbs as parts of speech. The first, and most important way, in which they are different from verbs is that they are not affected by tense. As the name implies, they exist outside of time and duration altogether, in an eternal "now"--infinitely, as it were. The following familiar quote is from William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act III, Scene i). All of its infinitive phrases have been emboldened, while all of the infinitive verbals have additionally been underlined:
Shakespeare's tragic hero is here caught in a moment of existential crisis over fate and eternity. Here, the infinite that the character ponders is aptly shown through Shakespeare's use of the infinitive verbal form: taking Hamlet and the audience "outside of time" for just a while. This is exactly the effect that the infinitive verbal form creates. In this way, it very closely resembles the gerund in that it's a way of being, rather than an action. However, infinitives do not imply an activity in progress the way that gerunds do. (And, this is logical because infinitives do not draw from any progressive verb tense the way gerunds do.) In fact, if we extend the photo "snapshot" analogy to gerunds and infinitives, a gerund freezes the action in time whereas an infinitive shows a still-life; a gerund captures an activity in progress while an infinitive abstracts from a concept. A gerund captures a behavior while an infinitive conveys a principle. No wonder Shakespeare paired infinitive verbs with one of the most philosophically important soliloquies in his collected dramatic works!
Infinitives can assume the role of three different parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Additionally, infinitives can take an object or a complement if they are not derived from intransitive verbs. For these reasons, the particular rules of using, phrasing, and diagramming infinitives are best discussed under the chapters of this resource that deal with adjectives, adverbs, and nouns. The links in the menu at left will take you to those appropriate places and include the following topics:
Karl J Sherlock
Associate Professor, English
Email: karl.sherlock@gcccd.edu
Phone: 619-644-7871
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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