Infinitive in a sentence

Some examples of infinitive phrases in English are given below – these may be based on either the full infinitive (introduced by the particle to) or the bare infinitive (without the particle to).

The form without to is called the bare infinitive; the form introduced by to is called the full infinitive or to-infinitive.

Uses of the infinitive The bare infinitive and the to-infinitive have a variety of uses in English.

Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks the infinitive entirely (instead having a raft of new periphrastic constructions) and uses participles more restrictedly.

Ed. R. W. Burchfield; Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (2005–2006), "split infinitive" The term compound split infinitive is not found in these dictionaries and appears to be very recent.

For further detail and examples of the uses of infinitives in English, see Bare infinitive and To-infinitive in the article on uses of English verb forms.

In Finnish, verbs have an infinitive form, marked with -ta and used in the infinitive, and an oblique form, which is used in personal forms.

Principal objections to the split infinitive Objections to the split infinitive fall into three categories, of which only the first is accorded any credence by linguists.

The contracted infinitive ending -eta/-etä have -itse/-itsi verbs take the infinitive stem -ita/itä.

The infinitive is the basic form of the verb (be, write, play), although there is also a "to-infinitive" (to be, to write, to play) used in many syntactical constructions.

The second infinitive is formed by replacing the final 'a'/'ä' of the first infinitive with 'e' then adding the appropriate inflectional ending.

These verbs drop the a which is present in the present tense stem and replace it with -t in the first infinitive stem followed by the standard -a or -ä first infinitive marker.

The third infinitive is technically a noun (denoting the act of performing some verb), so case suffixes identical to those attached to ordinary Finnish nouns allow for other expressions using the third infinitive, e.g. kirjoittamalla "by writing".

This terminology implies analysing the full infinitive as a two-word infinitive, which not all grammarians accept.

When the infinitive construct is preceded by ל (lə-, li-, lā-, lo-) "to", it has a similar meaning to the English to-infinitive, and this is its most frequent use in Modern Hebrew.

Afrikaans has lost the distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of the verbs "wees" (to be), which admits the present form "is", and the verb "hê" (to have), whose present form is "het".

Another auxiliary-type usage of the copula in English is together with the to-infinitive to denote an obligatory action or expected occurrence: "I am to serve you"; "The manager is to resign".

As shown above, none of the prescriptivists who started the split-infinitive controversy in the 19th century mentioned Latin in connection with it.

Avoiding split infinitives Writers who avoid splitting infinitives either place the splitting element elsewhere in the sentence or reformulate the sentence, perhaps rephrasing it without an infinitive and thus avoiding the issue.

A well-known example occurs in the opening sequence of the Star Trek television series: " to boldly go where no man has gone before " the adverb boldly is said to split the infinitive to go.