Re: Infinitives
| From: | BP Jonsson <bpj@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, March 28, 2000, 9:00 |
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>On Mon, 27 Mar 2000 18:32:29 +0200, Mangiat <mangiat@...> wrote:
>
>>Hello everyone!
>>I'd like to eliminate the infinitive in my Vaiysi, but I don't know how
>>precisely. I've heard that modern Greek has this feature (is it true?),
In Vedic Sanskrit the formation that later became an infinitive was still a
fully inflected noun, much like an _-ing_ noun (gerund) in English; cf.
"they like dancing" and "they like to dance", which mean pretty much the
same thing. Even in Classical Sanskrit the non-inflecting infinitive is
very seldom used, various deverbal noun formations being preferred
instead. But maybe that's too close to an ordinary infinitive for your
taste...
/BP
"Doubt grows with knowledge" -Goethe