Understanding Language: A Guide for Beginning Students of Greek and Latin

8. Special (Non-Finite) Verbal Forms: Infinitives and Participles

139 8 Special (Non-Finite) Verbal Forms Infinitives and Participles By now it should be clear that Greek and Latin verbs present challenges to English speakers in several ways. First, it is a challenge to recognize the verb forms, since they are marked by changes within the word, rather than by the addition of helping verbs as in English. Second, it is a challenge to understand the time and aspect indicated by different Greek and Latin tenses, since these do not line up very closely with English verb tenses. Third, it is a challenge to recognize the uses of the subjunctive mood (and, in the case of Greek, the optative), since we are losing our subjunctive in English today. It should also be clear, however, that these challenges have to do with the differences between Greek and Latin on one hand and English on the other. The challenges do not arise from any incoherence about the way Greek and Latin work. If one seeks to understand the classical languages on their own terms, it is by no means impossible to grasp the way they function. The classical languages are complex, but there is a logic to their complexity, and even an elegance about the way they work that in many ways English cannot match. It is now time to turn our attention to the final challenge that awaits an English speaker learning the Greek or Latin verb system: the fact that these two languages use non-finite verbal forms much more extensively than English does. Here as well, though, there is some good news to go along with the challenge. Greek and Latin infinitives and participles actually work quite similarly to English infinitives and participles. The difference is 140 Part 3: Verbs: The Heart of Communication that the classical languages have more of them (or at least more than we realize we have in English) and that they use them in situations where English would demand that we use subordinate clauses. So if you can recognize how English infinitives and participles work, even though we do not use them often, you will also be able to recognize how Latin and Greek nonfinite verbal forms work. This is the task to which we turn in this chapter. Infinitives: Verb Forms Used as Nouns As you now know, a non-finite verbal form is a form that is not limited to a particular person. Naturally, another name for “nonfinite ” is “infinite,” and thus it should be apparent that the infinitive is the non-finite verb form par excellence, because it is almost completely unlimited by its form. In English grammar, we generally say that we have only one infinitive, and this is the lexical form of a verb: “to swim,” “to give,” “to be.” Thus, in English as we choose to describe it, the infinitive carries with it no time, person, or number reference. Actually, however, we have verb forms that correspond to infinitives and that refer to present , past, and future time, but we simply do not choose to call them infinitives. Consider the following phrases: “to be doing,” “to have done,” “to be about to do.” These compound forms in English work like infinitives in Greek and Latin, and they correspond to present, past, and future time, just as Greek and Latin infinitives do. Furthermore, English has infinitive-like forms that are passive, rather than active: “to be done,” “to have been done,” “to be about to be done.” We do not use these phrases very often, but we can understand them perfectly well. Once one recognizes that we can use infinitive-type forms to indicate both active and passive action in the present, the past, or the future, then one is ready to understand Latin infinitives, which are presented in table 8-1. Notice that, as shown in this table, Latin infinitives do not convey aspect. In other words, the infinitive does not indicate whether the action is ongoing or completed. If it is crucial to indicate aspect, and if the aspect is not obvious from the context, Special (Non-Finite) Verbal Forms 141 then a Latin speaker/writer must recast the sentence using a finite verb form rather than an infinitive. One should remember that Latin verb tenses in general convey time more than aspect, and so it should not be surprising that Latin infinitives have no element of aspect at all. Accordingly, there are no...