Habemus infinitivum necne

No, not showing off, I had to ask a friend to correct my Latin (it's been a long time!) and there's a reason for the Latin phrase being added to the page. Here's a clue:it loosely translates as We have an infinitive, or do we?.

First things first

What's an infinitive and would it go with a glass of Château Musar? Probably yes, as to the latter. As to the former, it's actually hard to state exactly what it is because the definition of the infinitive varies slightly depending on which language you're looking at.

Coming at the infinitive from English, it is often described as the dictionary form (also called the citation form), for example, to go or by dropping the to simply go. It gets more complicated than that but I want to sidestep the precise definition of the infinitive in English because it's a bit of a head-bender (and that's me you're talking to!)and because the English concept is not really a helpful concept for Gaelic, as we'll see.

Anyway, this thing called the infinitive crops up in many European languages. For example, in Spanish, the basic form of verbs (those ending in -ir, -er or -ar) is referred to as the infinitive and these are also the forms you look for in the dictionary, for example morir "(to) die" or masticar "(to) chew". In German, the equivalent is -en, for example, bedienen "(to) serve" or verniedlichen "(to) make cute". And so on.

What's the attraction?

Well... the infinitive is the basis for inflection on the whole if the language in question has an inflection system. If in English, ignoring irregular verbs, you know (to) place then you know that by adding -(e)d you get the past, by adding -(e)s you get the he/she/it form (he/she/it places) and by adding -ing you get the participle (placing).

In some languages, you can also use infinitives to make ungrammatical but somewhat intelligible sentences if you're not fluent. So something like I place money here yesterday or Ich lesen Buch, while not grammatical, can be understood. Infinitives are one of the first verb forms taught to students of English, German, Spanish or French because they allow you to say a lot relatively fast, with relative ease.

What about languages which are not English?

Depends. Some languages outside the Indo-European family entertain the idea of an infinitive. Others go even further and do not inflect at all - such as Cantonese where the verb 生 (sāng "to give birth") does not change at all, and it can also be a noun. As a verb, it takes no endings, no prefixes, no suffixes, no he/she/it -s ... nothing like that. You can add a word like 咗 (jó) to indicate that this was in the past but jó is seen as an independent word, not part of sāng.

And then there are languages which entertain neither concept. Many Native American languages have nothing even approaching an English infinitive. They use a system that is wholly un-inflected, un-changed and basic. You might ask, what happens in a Lakhóta dictionary? No sweat. Lakhóta considers the most basic form of a verb to be the 3rd person singular. So, while an English dictionary will list (to) sing, Lakhóta will list lowáŋ "he/she/it sings". Because if you look at the whole shebang, you'll see this is the form with the least amount of 'bits' stuck on:

walowáŋ	I sing
yalowáŋ	you sing
lowáŋ	he/she/it sings
uŋlowáŋ	we two sing
uŋlowáŋpi	we (more than two) sing
yalowáŋpi	you (plural) sing
lowáŋpi	they sing

Which brings us to Gaelic and the Gaelic dictionary in which the most un-inflected, un-changed and basic form of a verb is considered to be the imperative singular, the form you use to order one person around.

leugh!	read!
seinn!	sing!
gearr!	cut!

Once you know the imperative form, you can derive all but one of the required verb forms by applying a set of rules. Again, we're ignoring irregular verbs. So, as an example, using gearr! you get the following:

gearraidh	to form the independent future, add -(a)idh to the imperative
ghearras	to form the relative future of a word beginning with b/c/d/g/m/p/s/t, lenite the initial letter and add -(e)as at the end
ghearramaid	to form the conditional of a word beginning with b/c/d/g/m/p/s/t, lenite the initial letter and add -(e)amaid at the end

And so on. It's a fairly long list but on the whole entirely predictable.

The only form that is not predictable is the verbal noun. So just by looking at gearr, it's hard to guess how to say "cutting". It could be gearradh or gearrachdainn or gearramh or gearrail or gearrachd, and so on. While there are preferred forms common to many areas, in this case gearradh, there is usually a lot of variation between dialects. So, while one areas says gearradh, another might prefer gearrachdainn. That isn't as confusing as it may sound because it's almost always clear from the word order that a word is or isn't a verbal noun and many people are fairly used to hearing different endings for verbal nouns.

Get to the darned infinitive already

Well, in a sense, you already have half the answer. If you equate the English infinitive with "the basic form of a verb that's listed in a dictionary" then you already know that this does not apply to Gaelic since Gaelic uses the imperative for this purpose.

But yes, there's a bit more to this story, because you're probably thinking of expressions like tha mi a' dol a bhualadh cù "I am going to hit a dog" or bu toigh leam a dhol a Ghlaschu "I want to go to Glasgow"

I've talked about this before - it's important to make a distinction between how something is constructed and how it's translated. On the face of it, this looks like an infinitive. After all, the English equivalent has "to go" and there's that handy little word a which the dictionary tells me means "to".

Yes, except you probably ignored the bit where it says prep(osition) or something like that. Let's analyse our Gaelic sentence word for word:

tha	mi	a'	dol	a	bhualadh	cù
be.PRES.IND	I	at	going	to	LEN.hitting	dog
I am going to hit a dog

The a in front of bhualadh unfortunately is not an infinitive particle or anything like that. It's the reduced form of the preposition do "to(wards)". The one that goes dhomh/dhut/dha/dhi... It's just that in Modern Gaelic, after a verb of motion such as dol you don't use the full form do but the reduced form a. So a clearer translation would be

tha	mi	a'	dol	a	bhualadh	cù
be.PRES.IND	I	at	going	towards	LEN.hitting	dog
I am going to(wards hitting a dog

You're probably actually already comfortable with this construction - just swap the bhualadh with a place name, for example:

tha	mi	a'	dol	a	Ghlaschu
be.PRES.IND	I	at	going	to(wards)	LEN.Glasgow
I am going to(wards) Glasgow

and you most likely wouldn't bat an eyelid. It's the same a (« do "to(wards)").

Of course the fact that in translation it looks like and English infinitive doesn't help. But if instead of saying "going to hitting a dog" you say "going towards hitting a dog" it might be a bit more apparent.

But what about that other one?

I was getting there. So there are sentences like the following:

bu	toigh	leam	leabhar	a	leughadh
COND	agreeableness	with.me	book	INF	reading
I would like to read a book
bu	toigh	leam	cù	a	bhualadh
COND	agreeableness	with.me	dog	INF	LEN.hitting
I would like to hit a dog

This is where you must pay very close attention to the difference between an infinitive and an infinitive(-like) construction.

English has a genuine infinitive, that un-changed and basic form of verbs ("(to) sit/eat/drink/run/read/like..."). You can use the infinitive in English to derive other verb forms (like » likes; liked; liking; liketh...). Or you can use it to make infinitive constructions. That would be a sentence that contains a verb in the infinitive, such as I like to read.

Still with me? Ok so what we have in those Gaelic sentences are infinitive(-like) constructions. They are called infinitive-like because they get translated into English using an infinitive. But look again at the verbs in the Gaelic sentences. Yes, that's right, they're just boring old verbal nouns, reading and going with an a slapped in front of it. The a is indeed called an infinitive particle (you may want to check out the page on The many functions of ə) but it's only called that because of its function. It causes lenition but unlike in English, it is not followed by a verb in the infinitive but rather a verbal noun.

Which means that the Gaelic looks a bit like an infinitive-like construction and that the translation (into English) uses an infinitive but neither of these two things mean that therefore Gaelic has a basic, un-changed, un-inflected form of the verb that you can use like sit/eat/drink/run/read/like.

What about a dhol and a bhith?

It wouldn't be Gaelic now if there wasn't an odd one. Normally, if there is no object you just slap the verbal noun after your modal verb or expression, such as

bu	toigh	leam	seinn
COND	agreeableness	with.me	singing
I would like to sing

faodaidh	tu	falbh
may	you	going
You may go

chan	urrainn	dhomh	snàmh
NEG	ability	to.me	swimming
I cannot swim

But if the verbal noun happens to be dol or bith (and in some dialects tighinn is also affected), the infinitive particle gets slapped in front of dol, bith (and tighinn):

bu	toigh	leam	a	dhol	dhan	sgoil
COND	agreeableness	with.me	INF	LEN.going	to.the	school
I would like to go to school
bu	toigh	leam	a	thighinn	dhachaigh	a-rithist
COND	agreeableness	with.me	INF	LEN.coming	homewards	again
I would like to come home again
an	caomh	leat	a	bhith	ag	éisteachd?
INTERR	gentle	with.you	INF	LEN.being	PARTICIPLE	listening
would you like to be listening?

Just those two. Don't ask me why. Of course you can combine them:

bu	toigh	leam	a	dhol	a	Ghlaschu
COND	agreeableness	with.me	INF	LEN.going	to(wards)	LEN.Glasgow

But I have a book which says there is an infinitive

Paper is patient as the Germans say. It will hold E=m2 just the same as an election leaflet promising a land of milk and honey.

Firs of all, there are many different particles in Gaelic which are just written a and keeping them apart. Secondly, many people writing about grammar have come from a university background where traditionally the description of grammar (of any language) is or was heavily influenced by Latin and Greek. Like a pair of shades, it kind of colours your vision without thinking. I had the same issue when I ran into Native American languages the first time where very few of the European concepts of grammar go very far.

So one is a bit prone to seeing these Latin and Greek categories and trying to make them fit and describe everything else as "exceptions". Take unit 95 from (the otherwise excellent) Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks where you're told that:

Infinitive are used with the following auxiliary verbs and idioms:

(a) the modal verbs feum and faod

(b) modal idioms expressing obligation

(c) a number of idioms expressing 'wanting, liking, hoping, capability, remembering, obligation, managing'

(d) verbs expressing motion or intent

(e) the verb sguir 'cease'

This list unfortunately conflates at least three different things, which isn't helpful. To begin with, (a), (b) and (c) are really the same thing. It's a longish way of saying "modal verbs and expressions" - for starters, there are others aside from feum and faod.

The fourth one, (d), kind of refers both to a-c (the intent) part and expressions of motion - which is something else as we saw. The examples in Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks under (d) are really what we already talked of above, instances of the reduced form of do "to(wards)":

chaidh	Iain	a	cheannach
(PAST).go	Iain	to(wards)	LEN.crying
Iain went to buy it (« towards buying it)

This is blatantly obvious in the third example:

thàinig	Anna	a	dh'fhaicinn
(PAST).come	Ann	to(wards)	dh'.LEN.seeing
Ann came to see (« towards seeing)

The combination of dh' appearing alongside lenition is textbook behaviour for do "to(wards)". Compare sentences like the following you'll be very familiar with:

thoir	an	leabhar	do	dh'Fhionnlagh
give	DEF.ART	book	to(wards)	dh'.LEN.Finlay
give the book to(wards) Finlay
thug	e	ubhal	do	dh'Fhearchar
PAST.give	he	apple	to(wards)	dh'.LEN.Fergus
he gave an apple to(wards) Fergus

And (e) is again a misreading of the a that appears in such constructions. Some verbs simply take certain prepositions, sguir normally taking de. So the a in the case of sguir is just the worn down form of de. So re-analysing the example from Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks, it's a simple case of:

sguir	iad	a	chaoineadh
(PAST).stop	they	PART	LEN.crying
they stopped crying (lit. they stopped from crying)

being the shortened version of

sguir	iad	de	chaoineadh
(PAST).stop	they	PART	LEN.crying
they stopped crying (lit. they stopped from crying)

Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks then goes on to talk about Indirect objects of infinitives - there isn't a hint of anything infinitive-ish in the Gaelic and the only reason why the chapter is called thus is because the English translation uses infinitives. In Gaelic, it's just our friend the verbal noun:

bu	toil	leam	bruidhinn	ri	Seumas
COND.copula	pleasant	with.me	speaking	against	James
I would like to speak to James

But because the translation of this is I would like to speak to James, this is suddenly labelled an infinitive.

In a word

Practically speaking, this means:

1. don't go hunting for references to the infinitive in Gaelic. You're wasting your time. There is nothing approaching this kind of basic verb form in Gaelic. That's just the way it is.
2. the dictionary form of a Gaelic verb is the imperative (order form).
3. after a verb of motion (most commonly a' dol) the a is a reduced form of the preposition "to(wards)"
4. in inverted phrases (such as bu toigh leam leabhar a leughadh), what you get is the relative particle a plus a verbal noun. Which is often translated into English with an infinitive but that doesn't make Gaelic have one of those.

So the whole hunt for a Gaelic infinitive is fuelled mainly

• by learners hoping for a quick fix
• and by linguists (in the old days) trying to squeeze all languages into the corset of grammatical terms that work in Latin and Greek.
• by various people looking at the English sentence and thinking "English has an infinitive here, so Gaelic must have one too"

Simples!

Now, what's inversion?