What's the difference? (infinitives issue)

[Níall Beag]

A Stiophain - take cover - you may be about to suffer an attack from the "there's no infinitive in Gaelic" squad...

[Nìall dons parachute and cocks rifle.]

Seriously though, there is no infinitive word form, but there are infinitive structures[*] -- or perhaps "non-finite" is better. I'll have to have a look at my old terminology list again....

[*] It is the preposition that lenites the verbal noun in an infintive/non-finite construction -- the word itself behaves no differently from any other verbal noun. It is the preposition that makes the construction infinitive, not the verbal noun, so Stiofan's statement was OK -- he called the construction infinitive, not the word.

[Seonaidh]

Saved by the preposition...

Seriously, though, I don't recall any mention of an infinitive in Welsh. It has verbnouns, like Gaelic, that can have a variety of prepositions before, some of which cause changes (similar to lenition) and others that divven't. You ken what works in Welsh, what works in English, and a rough mapping between. You divven't get bogged down with what particular sort of grammar it is. Surely it's the same for Gaelic.

Gu dearbh, I recall doing Latin at school - absolutely stuffed fu of grammar, did very well in it to start with (mathematical brain), could never speak a word of it to save worsel. Not at all sure the Romans could, either... Nil carborundum illegitimes. Caesar sic in omnibus.

Nowthen, what exactly is a "finitive"? Does it exist? Is it just a verb form that's related to a particular subject, e.g. Latin sum, Catalan soc, English am, Welsh wyf? And if so where does it leave the Welsh impersonals, e.g. "prynir" (closest English equiv. probably "is bought", or "one buys", but doesn't really exist in English). It's not a passive, just a verb form without a specific subject (and these forms exist in all tenses and moods found in non-periphrastic forms in Welsh). But the important thing is knowing what's natural and what it does, not whether it happens to be Grammatical Type X or not.

What's that famous line from Shakespeare's Bailebeag? "A bhith no cha bhith, sin a' cheist"? (Bod te beidio, 'na'r pos...)

[GunChleoc]

/begin overly technical post

The definition of a finite verb that I have learned is that it is marked for tense/aspect/mode and person/number. An infinitive is the opposite - it doesn't have any of those. Of course, you can then get languages that will just mess up your nice linguistic theory, like e.g. the Portuguese Personal Infinitive - it has person/number endings, but no tense/aspect/mode. I guess a Gaelic form like thathar, bhathar, bithear would have tense/aspect/mode, but no person/number. Not that you see any person/number overtly in Gaelic anymore, except for some odd forms like bhithinn/bhiodh etc. I guess the dinicator is if you can add a personal pronoun to it - tha thu, bhiodh tu, but not *thathar tu

/end overly technical post

[Stìophan]

Guys

In my post I was pointing out the 2 different meanings of do and the effect they have an the following word(s).

In school we are tought the "infinitive" as being the "to" part of the verb i.e. to get, to go etc, the nearest in Gaelic we get to this is the a dh'fhaighinn, a dhol forms etc

When comparing grammatical constructions in 2 unrelated languages you will always hit boundaries, I think we have hit one here.

Gun Chleoc aren't the thathar etc forms simply known as impersonal verbs? i.e. used when no subject is specified?

[GunChleoc]

Gun Chleoc aren't the thathar etc forms simply known as impersonal verbs? i.e. used when no subject is specified?

I don't know what one usually calls them, so you might be right there.

[Níall Beag]

"Finite" just means "limited". (But also consider definite

"I watched TV yesterday" -- the watching is finite, because it has a clear limit.

"I like to watch TV" -- the watching is non-finite, because it could happen at any time.

Now (as far as I can see) the term "infinitive" refers to a form that is by nature non-finite. While the English watch is arguably non-finite -- you can claim (with historical evidence as support) that the present "I/you/we/they watch" form is merely a coincidental likeness. However, it's hard to justify claiming that the verbal noun is a different word form from the "infinitive", because they have always been the same and are the same even in the most irregular verbs (unlike English: "to be" vs "I am" and "you/we/they are").

The Gaelic "infinitive" therefore only exists at the phrase level, as I already said. I think that really makes it non-finite, not "infinitive".

[deardron]

Amhlaobh, in traditional grammar infinitives too are considered verbal nouns

How do you mean? General linguistic grammar theory or Gaelic grammar books (or web sites etc)? If the latter, then repetition of a Gaelic "Infinitive" doesn't make it better - it can only be that English grammar categories are used for a different language without thinking.
If the former, I must admit I've never seen it: an infinitive is commonly a form of the verb that doesn't show person, number, tense etc. (although rules what constitutes an infinitive differs from language to language), which doesn't really fit as a description of a verbal noun.
I would be interested to get more information about this topic if you have!

Sorry that it took me a while to reply. Infinitive is regarded as one of verbal nouns (apart from participles, gerunds, gerundives etc.) just because in many Indo-European languages it originates from a noun which designated an action (i.e. it used to be the same situation as in today's Gaelic, bu then it was grammaticalised and all infinitives got a common ending). Apart from that, infinitives in several IE languages are often preceeded by a particle which is an old preposition, cf. Eng. to, German zu, Scand. at (= Gael. a < do) etc. and prepositions are only used with nouns.

But infinitives are not pure nouns, they do inherit some verbal traits, such as tenses or aspects. F.ex. in "I ought to have done it" we have the past form of infitive: "to have done". In English it involves the auxiliary verb "to do" while f.ex. in Faroese it's not necessary and it's just another ending.
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I've decided to conjugate the verbal name of "faicinn" in the following way and ask experts to say what's right and what's wrong:

The boy wants to see me - Tha am balach ag iarraidh m'fhaicinn
The boy wants to see you - Tha am balach ag iarraidh d'fhaicinn
The boy wants to see him - Tha am balach ag iarraidh fhaicinn
The boy wants to see her - Tha am balach ag iarraidh a faicinn
The boy wants to see us - Tha am balach ag iarraidh ar faicinn
The boy wants to see you - Tha am balach ag iarraidh ur faicinn
The boy wants to see them - Tha am balach ag iarraidh an faicinn
The boy wants to see the girl - Tha am balach ag iarraidh an nighean a dh'fhaicinn/... ag iarraidh a dh'fhaicinn na nighean (or may be - ag iarraidh faicinn na nighean?)

[Seonaidh]

Dingbat! Just triped a load of stuff and it varnished...

The boy wants to see them - Tha am balach ag iarraidh an faicinn
The boy wants to see the girl - Tha am balach ag iarraidh an nighean a dh'fhaicinn/... ag iarraidh a dh'fhaicinn na nighean (or may be - ag iarraidh faicinn na nighean?)

Tha am balach ag iarraidh am faicinn
Tha am balach ag iarraidh a' chaileag NOTHING fhaicinn

Dos the rest. A verbnoun covers a multitude of sins. for which English uses a variety of things, e.g. "I might go" (bare verbnoun", "Give it a go" (as a noun), "We want to go" (trad. "to" +), "He's going" (present participle I think they call that), "Hard going" (as a noun) - mostly covered by the verbnoun in Gaelic, with or without other bits (e.g. prepositions) in front.

[deardron]

Tha am balach ag iarraidh am faicinn
Tha am balach ag iarraidh a' chaileag NOTHING fhaicinn

Thanks, silly me, it certainly had to be am faicinn!