Editing Infinitive (section)

== Latin and Romance languages ==
The formation of the infinitive in the [[Romance languages]] reflects that in their ancestor, [[Latin]], almost all verbs had an infinitive ending with ''-re'' (preceded by one of various thematic vowels). For example, in [[Italian language|Italian]] infinitives end in ''-are'', ''-ere'', ''-rre'' (rare), or ''-ire'' (which is still identical to the Latin forms), and in ''-arsi'', ''-ersi'', ''-rsi'', ''-irsi'' for the reflexive forms. In [[Spanish language|Spanish]] and [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], infinitives end in ''-ar'', ''-er'', or ''-ir'' ([[Spanish language|Spanish]] also has reflexive forms in ''-arse'', ''-erse'', ''-irse''), while similarly in [[French language|French]] they typically end in ''-re'', ''-er'', ''oir'', and ''-ir''. In [[Romanian language|Romanian]], both short and long-form infinitives exist; the so-called "long infinitives" end in ''-are, -ere, -ire'' and in modern speech are used exclusively as verbal nouns, while there are a few verbs that cannot be converted into the [[noun|nominal]] long infinitive.<ref>{{citation |chapter-url=http://ebooks.unibuc.ro/filologie/dindelegan/2.pdf |editor-last=Pană Dindelegan |editor-first=Gabriela |chapter=Aspecte ale substantivizării în româna actuală. Forme de manifestare a substantivizării adjectivului |first=Gabriela |last=Pană Dindelegan |author-link=Gabriela Pană Dindelegan |language=ro |title=Aspecte ale dinamicii limbii române actuale II |place=Bucharest |publisher=University of Bucharest |isbn=973-575-825-3 |date=2004 |access-date=2011-02-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011015959/http://ebooks.unibuc.ro/filologie/dindelegan/2.pdf |archive-date=2017-10-11 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The "short infinitives" used in verbal contexts (e.g., after an auxiliary verb) have the endings ''-a'',''-ea'', ''-e'', and ''-i'' (basically removing the ending in "-re"). In Romanian, the infinitive is usually replaced by a clause containing the conjunction ''să'' plus the subjunctive mood. The only verb that is modal in common modern Romanian is the verb ''a putea'', to be able to. However, in popular speech the infinitive after ''a putea'' is also increasingly replaced by the subjunctive.

In all Romance languages, infinitives can also form nouns.

Latin infinitives challenged several of the generalizations about infinitives. They did inflect for [[Grammatical voice|voice]] (''amare'', "to love", ''amari'', to be loved) and for tense (''amare'', "to love", ''amavisse'', "to have loved"), and allowed for an overt expression of the subject (''video Socratem currere'', "I see Socrates running"). See {{slink|Latin conjugation|Infinitives}}.

Romance languages inherited from Latin the possibility of an overt expression of the subject (as in Italian ''vedo Socrate correre''). Moreover, the "'''inflected infinitive'''" (or "personal infinitive") found in Portuguese and [[Galician language|Galician]] inflects for person and number.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Maurer Júnior |first=Theodoro Henrique |title=O infinito flexionado português |publisher=Companhia Editora Nacional |year=1968 |location=São Paulo |language=pt |author-link=Theodoro Henrique Maurer Júnior}}</ref> These, alongside some dialects of Logudorese Sardinian, Old Neapolitan and some modern Southern Italian languages {{citation needed|date=August 2021}} are the only [[Indo-European languages]] that allow infinitives to take person and number endings. This helps to make infinitive clauses very common in these languages; for example, the English finite clause ''in order that you/she/we have...'' would be translated to Portuguese like ''para ter'''es'''/ela ter/ter'''mos'''...'' (Portuguese is a [[null-subject language]]). The Portuguese personal infinitive has no proper tenses, only aspects (imperfect and perfect), but tenses can be expressed using [[periphrasis|periphrastic]] structures. For instance, ''"even though you sing/have sung/are going to sing"'' could be translated to ''"apesar de cantares/teres cantado/ires cantar"''.

Other Romance languages (including Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, and some Italian dialects) allow uninflected infinitives to combine with overt nominative subjects. For example, Spanish ''al abrir '''yo''' los ojos'' ("when I opened my eyes") or ''sin '''yo''' saberlo'' ("without my knowing about it").<ref>{{cite thesis |url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/4097236/Teza-doctorala-despre-infinitiv-in-limbile-romanice |title=Pragmatic Causation in the Rise of the Romance Prepositional Infinitive: A statistically-based study with special reference to Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian|first=Kim|last=Schulte|date=2004|pages=153–70|type=Ph.D. |publisher=University of Cambridge}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |isbn=978-3-03911-327-9 |title=Prepositional Infinitives in Romance: A Usage-based Approach to Syntactic Change |series=Studies in Historical Linguistics |volume=3 |first=Kim|last=Schulte|date=2007|pages=73–84|place=Berne/Oxford|publisher=Peter Lang}}</ref>