The role of the infinitive in the Russian language is extremely important, despite the fact that this form of the verb does not have such grammatical features as face, time, 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 movement. The infinitive of the verb embodies the very essence of the process in its pure form, without impurities.
What is an infinitive?
An 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 relation 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
The infinitive in Russian is formed from the stem of verbs with the help of some suffixes. These include:
- "-ti" and "-sti" ( carry, enter, find, carry, revenge, shake) ;
- "-t" and "-t" ( sit, kick, take, steal, fall, abyss) ;
- "-ch" ( guard, cut, bake) .
Morphological features
In the Russian language, the infinitive has certain morphological features:
- View. It can be perfect ( eat, cook, rewrite ) and imperfect ( wash, watch, grow ).
- Returnability. There are reflexive verbs (to form, decide, close ) and irrevocable ( wash, wrap, read).
- Transitivity. There are transitional verbs ( ironing a shirt, hating villainy, reading a novel ) and intransitive ( dressing, having fun, suffering ).
- Conjugation. Examples of verbs of the first conjugation are to mix, attract, do, and the second conjugation is to draw, yell, love.
- Pledge. A valid guarantee ( we want to make pizza ) and a passive guarantee ( pizza must be prepared ).
Syntactic role
The syntactic role of the infinitive in the Russian language is important and diverse. In a sentence, it may be:
Running in the morning is the path to a healthy mind and longevity. Browsing the Internet is her addiction and compelling habit. Creating a happy family is the goal of his life.
- An independent predicate or part of a compound.
Do not see you happiness. Raise the sails! Do not argue with the captain, salag! The puppy's tail began to spin with a screw. She wanted to trick me. I try to be considerate.
They were driven by a desire to solve the mystery. She was stopped by the fear of mistakes. They condemned his manner of speaking pathetically.
He begged them to celebrate and have fun more quietly. His father taught him to sail. Luda deigned to forgive her husband.
He came to help us with the repair. We went across the river to feed horses and goats. We go to the forest to pick mushrooms.
Stylistics and lexical shades of infinitives
The infinitive finds the greatest application 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 opposite. It becomes one of the spectacular and effective tools in the hands of the masters of the word.
The lack of categories of time, number, face, and mood in an infinitive at first glance may seem like a clear flaw in the context of a work of art, but this, oddly enough, turns into dignity. Due to a certain grammatical fading, infinitive forms draw attention to lexical, semantic nuances and meanings in the text. Proposals begin to play with new colors and fill with semantic specificity. It is literature and live speech that fully reveal the expressive potential of the infinitive in the Russian language. There are many examples, here are just a few.
So, the infinitive in the sentence may hint at the unconditionality of some action that is sure to happen in the future:
- You and I will be your spouses.
- A happy, fair society - to be!
In conjunction with negation, the infinitive form focuses on the impossibility of a certain event or action:
- Do not drink more wine and not eat fatty meat, doctors strictly forbade.
- You and I don’t go to museums and movie theaters anymore; I’m leaving forever tomorrow.
The same confidence of impossibility of an event is conveyed by the infinitive with the pronoun in the dative case:
- Where do you argue with the professor, he is much smarter and incomparably more knowledgeable in this matter.
- Where can he lose weight with such an insatiable gluttony at night.
The particle “would” gives the infinitive a hue of the desirability of an action or event:
- To abandon all duties and routine affairs and go to sea, but this is impossible.
- To finally find the right answers to all eternal questions.
If negation is added to the particle “would”, then the infinitive form takes on a warning value:
- Do not get sick from these endless diets and exhausting workouts.
- I would not regret them later that they contacted a bank promising fabulous interest.