The role of the infinitive in Russian is extremely important, despite the fact that this form of the verb does not have such grammatical features as person, tense, gender, mood, number. But the infinitive fills in the gaps in grammatical information by focusing on the properties of an object or events that manifest themselves in dynamics, in motion. The infinitive of the verb embodies the very essence of the process in its pure form, without impurities.
What is an infinitive?
Infinitive in Russian is an indefinite form of a verb that denotes a state, action or event without indicating a specific subject of the action and its relationship to reality. This form is the initial, most generalized and answers the following questions:
- What to do? Sleep, shine, run, work, pour.
- What to do? Paint, dry, eat, sing, give.
How an indefinite form is formed
Infinitive in Russian is formed from the basis of verbs with the help of some suffixes. These include:
- "-ti" and "-sti" (carry, enter, find, carry, revenge, shake);
- "-th" and "-th"(sit, kick, take, steal, fall, fall);
- "-ch" (guard, shear, bake).
Morphological features
The infinitive in Russian has certain morphological features:
- View. It can be perfect (eat, cook, rewrite) or imperfect (wash, watch, grow).
- Returnability. There are reflexive verbs (form, decide, close) and irrevocable (wash, wrap, read).
- Transitivity. There are transitive verbs (to iron a shirt, hate meanness, read a novel) and intransitive verbs (to dress, have fun, suffer).
- Conjugation. Examples of verbs of the first conjugation are mix, attract, make, and the second conjugation is to draw, yell, love.
- Bail. Active voice (we want to cook pizza) and passive voice (pizza should be cooked).
Syntactic role
The syntactic role of the infinitive in Russian is important and varied. In a sentence, it can be:
Subject
Running in the morning is the way to a he althy mind and longevity. Surfing the Internet is her pernicious and irresistible habit. Creating a happy family is the goal of his life.
Independent predicate or part of compound
You will not see happiness. Raise the sails! Do not argue with the captain, newbies! The puppy's tail began to spin like a screw. She wanted to deceive me. Trying to be tactful.
Inconsistentdefinition
They were driven by the desire to unravel the mystery. She was afraid of making a mistake. They criticized his pompous way of speaking.
Supplement
He begged them to celebrate and be quiet. His father taught him to sail. Luda deigned to forgive her husband.
Circumstance
He came to help us with repairs. We went across the river to feed the horses and goats. We go to the forest to pick mushrooms.
Style and lexical shades of infinitives
The infinitive finds the greatest use in business and official styles, in which the clarity of verb forms is welcomed, and the name of the process itself, its essence, is more important than details. However, this does not mean that the infinitive is not used in fiction and figurative colloquial speech, quite the contrary. It becomes one of the spectacular and effective tools in the hands of masters of the word.
The absence of the categories of time, number, person, mood in the infinitive at first glance may seem like a clear disadvantage in the context of a work of art, but this, oddly enough, turns into a virtue. Due to some grammatical fading, infinitive forms draw attention to lexical, semantic shades and meanings in the text. Proposals begin to play with new colors and be filled with semantic specifics. It is literature and live speech that most fully reveal the expressive potential of the infinitive in the Russian language. There are many examples of this, here are just a few.
So, the infinitive in a sentence can hint at the unconditionality of somean action that will definitely take place in the future:
- To be spouses with you, you'll see.
- Happy, just society - to be!
In conjunction with negation, the infinitive form focuses on the impossibility of some event or action:
- Do not drink more wine and do not eat fatty meat, the doctors strictly forbade.
- Don't go to museums and cinemas anymore, I'm leaving tomorrow forever.
The same confidence in the impossibility of the event is conveyed by the infinitive with a pronoun in the dative case:
- Where can you argue with the professor, he is much smarter and incomparably more knowledgeable in this matter.
- Where can he lose weight with such insatiable gluttony at night.
The particle "would" gives the infinitive a hint of the desirability of an action or event:
- I would give up all duties and routine affairs and go to the sea, but this is impossible.
- To finally find the right answers to all the eternal questions.
If a negative is added to the particle "would", then the infinitive form acquires a warning meaning:
- Don't get sick from these endless diets and exhausting workouts.
- They would not regret later that they contacted a bank promising fabulous interest.
