text:
Talk:ISO 4217

'conflict' with ISO
In the "Unofficial codes for cryptocurrencies" it currently states that 6 cryptocurrencies 'conflict' with the ISO 4217. I think that statement is not true. A 3 cryptocurrency letter identifier like BTC, BNB, ADA, BSV, ETH and LTC does not conflict with a 2 letter identifier from the ISO like BT, BN, AD, BS, ET, LT. '''My suggestion is that we delete the notes on that. Agree?'''

The first Wikipedia question is: What is the reliable source of the statement?

Things we could look for in that reliable source: Do cryptocurrencies fall under the ISO 4217 norm?

According to the "NEN-ISO 4217:2015 en" Cite: "Codes for the representation of currencies 1 Scope This International Standard specifies the structure for a three-letter alphabetic code and an equivalent three-digit numeric code for the representation of currencies. For those currencies having minor units, it also shows the decimal relationship between such units and the currency itself. The scope of this International Standard also includes funds and precious metals."

Cite: "3.2 currency medium of exchange of value, defined by reference to the geographical location of the monetary authorities responsible for it"

For example: According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andorra the abbreviation AD is a ISO 3166 code. Nor in the ISO 3166 or ISO 4217:2015 states that ADA is reserved. Same for the others.

 * It's a potential conflict, in that the 26 BT* codes are effectively reserved for currencies of Bhutan, and BTL might one day become the Bhutanese Lira or similar, but that's my OR. It's a shame that the standard is greedily locked behind a paywall; I'd love to see an open-source replacement with compatible codes.  Certes (talk) 20:57, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Usually whatever a country's CcTLD is, is also the currency codes reserved for that nation. For example.
 * The United States is: ".US" therefore: US dollar is "USD".
 * United Kingdom at first had ".GB", long before ".UK" so their's became "GBP" Great British Pound.
 * South Africa is ".ZA" therefore their currency code is "ZAR" (South Africa Rand).
 * Cuba is ".CU" therefore their **currencies codes** (plural) are "CUP" (Cuban Peso) and "CUC" (Cuban Convertible Peso)
 * Canada is ".CA" therefore their currency code is "CAD" (Canadian Dollar).
 * Japan is ".JP" therefore their currency code is "JPY" (Japanese Yen).
 * Australia is ".AU" therefore their currency code is "AUD" (Australian Dollar).
 * The Commonwealth of the Bahamas is ".BS" therefore their currencies codes are "BSD" (Bahamas dollar) and their new Sand dollar will likely by "BSx" (Whatever later they elect for "x". You get it surely. CaribDigita (talk) 04:28, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, I get it, though dotted versions such as ".za" are internet top-level domains which occasionally vary from the ISO 3166 country codes on which ISO 4217 is based. The question is whether the paywalled ISO specification, or preferably a reliable source reporting it, explicitly states that (for example) the BSA–BSZ range is reserved for Bahamas, or it is simply a OR observation that it happens de facto. Certes (talk) 12:37, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The intent of ISO 4217 is to agree with ISO 3166. But as I stated there's a few variations for example some country names have changed over time or places like UK used to use the domain name .GB but retired that in favour of .UK.  It states right on ISO's website that 4217 comes from 3166.

 * It's not O.R. Their site says it. -- https://www.iso.org/iso-4217-currency-codes.html
 * (quote)"The alphabetic code is based on another ISO standard, ISO 3166, which lists the codes for country names. The first two letters of the ISO 4217 three-letter code are the same as the code for the country name, and, where possible, the third letter corresponds to the first letter of the currency name.

 * For example:
 * The US dollar is represented as USD – the US coming from the ISO 3166 country code and the D for dollar.
 * The Swiss franc is represented by CHF – the CH being the code for Switzerland in the ISO 3166 code and F for franc."(end quote) CaribDigita (talk) 18:46, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
 * ISO say that (for example) a currency in the country with code CH has a code beginning with CH. They do not explicitly state the converse: that codes beginning with CH are reserved for that country.  Common sense tells us that CHZ will not be allocated for some other purpose, but reliable sources do not, so we should probably let readers make that leap of faith for themselves.  Certes (talk) 23:54, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
 * You asked for it, and ISO 4217 told you on their website that was how they created it. A two digit code which is based ion ISO 3166's code, plus a letter they seek to assign based on the name of a currency, what's confusing about that? It's not ISO's fault that Bitcoin chose BT and didn't think 'Oh geez that belongs to the country assigned to .bt (Bhutan).' How is that original research? Whomelse is going to get CHZ besides Switzerland? Since Switzerland controls "CH"?

That's like arguing the phone number starting with +1.212. doesn't belong to Manhattan, New York City. CaribDigita (talk) 00:13, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
 * It's hardly worth spending so much time on such a minor detail, but we're dealing with two assertions here:
 * All Bhutan codes will begin with BT;
 * All codes beginning with BT are reserved for Bhutan.
 * The first does not imply the second, in the same way that "all dogs are animals" does not imply "all animals are dogs". ISO 4217 confirms the first statement; it's a primary source but we can probably find reliable secondary sources that repeat it.  The second statement also seems to be true, but our observation doesn't seem to be documented anywhere. Certes (talk) 00:29, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
 * says otherwise. IS0 4217 says the code is three letters long. The first two belong to the country as spelled out under ISO 3166.  The last letter would be a currency name. So I don't see how: "CHA, CHB, CHC, CHD, CHE, CHF, CHG, CHH, CHI, CHJ, CHK, CHL, CHM, CHN, CHO, CHP, CHQ, CHR, CHS, CHT, CHU, CHV, CHW, CHX, CHY, CHZ." is going to be any other nation beside Switzerland. Therefore A-Z of the last letter would be reserved for that nation. Who are you implying is going to get any of these 3 letter combinations? bearing in mind the ISO syntax as spelled out on? - https://www.iso.org/iso-4217-currency-codes.html CaribDigita (talk) 05:32, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The assertion is correct. As per ISO 4217:2015 paragraph 5.1.4:"Where the currency is not associated with a single ISO 3166-1 geographical entity, then the following cases apply: In the case of the European Union and the euro, the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency explicitly accepted to reserve the alpha-2 code element “EU” for the European Union to use “EUR” for the purposes of this International Standard. In the case that the currency is emitted by a monetary authority, the code shall be allocated by the Maintenance Agency from within the user-assigned range of codes XA to XZ specified in ISO 3166-1:2013, 8.1.3."This confirms that only codes  and   to   can be assigned under the standard to currencies not issued by countries. Most cryptocurrencies don't even meet the standard to have codes assigned at all, given they aren't issued by the European Union or a monetary authority (and I suspect the EU can't just decide to replace the Euro with a cryptocurrency using the same code, either...). Theknightwho (talk) 12:43, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you. The next section of this talk page is also relevant. Certes (talk) 12:54, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Proposal: delete list of cryptocurrencies and their TLAs
The TLAs used by cryptocurrencies are just that, TLAs. They are as unrelated to ISO 4317 as are the TLAs used by the Internet Engineering Task Force, Wikimedia, Microsoft, or anyone else. Their presence here in the body of the article implies some status within the ISO standard when none exists. The most it deserves, IMO, is a mention in See Also.

Is there any convincing reason to retain? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:51, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Support, unless someone can find these codes in ISO 4217. They're not currencies, nor (as far as I know) official extensions like XAU.  We could retain the section with its single paragraph of text and hatnote to List of cryptocurrencies, or simply move that link to See also.  That list has a better list of codes, some of which conflict with potential currencies or are not three letters.  Certes (talk) 13:14, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

 * Support unless they are actually in the standard ISO 4217. I doubt they are because in many cases they are not even compatible with ISO 4217.  We could of course provide a link to a more appropriate article if required. Kahastok talk 16:15, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

 * Support deletion. I agree with using a See also entry for List of cryptocurrencies as they are not ISO 4217 codes. DRMcCreedy (talk) 23:19, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Cryptocurrency TLAs done. Promissory notes issued in the Russian occupied territories not done, needs a new discussion I suggest - anyone? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:41, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Support, but I think we need a suitable replacement. I don't really care about cryptocurrencies, but presumably some people want to know what the various codes are. We also need to justify why we're deleting these but not the other non-ISO codes. 16:03, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The cryptos are the most glaring exception. I also believe that the Russian-occupied territories should go too, but I will make a new proposal for that. I will also propose deletion of notional currencies, like UK and Danish crown territories that are not independent (which is why they don't have an ISO code). I would welcome suggestions about how to handle ForEx shorthand like RMB (Renminbi, CNY) and STG (sterling, GBP) and errors like BDS (for BBD). IMO, the whole section #Non ISO 4217 currencies should collapse to two or three sentences. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:21, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The problem with this is that it assumes that no-one actually uses these codes, which isn't entirely true. Even the notional ones are used in numismatics, for example. I think we could split it off into its own article, which may be a better approach. Theknightwho (talk) 18:53, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, the article is about an ISO standard and should only include codes relevant to the standard. List of widely used codes for things that resemble currencies might be a very useful article, much of which would be a section starting, but perhaps it's not this article. Certes (talk) 19:08, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Best of luck with that, you will need it. Avoiding OR and SYNTH will be difficult. Also we don't want to do anything that might suggest that the Russian occupation of parts of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – or the puppet regimes that Putin has installed there – has any legitimacy. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:57, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Retrospectively assigned codes, and confirming ARY
I can confirm that  does in fact refer to the. Here's my exchange with the Publications Office of the European Union to confirm. For context, this refers to the list of currencies they publish, which formerly included a bunch of additional codes that are not part of the standard (such as ).Me: I understand that you have previously been in contact with a different user as regards the ISO 4217 Wikipedia page; specifically the list of currency codes published at https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/concept-scheme/-/resource?uri=http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/currency.

As a result of that discussion, it appears that the code ARL for the Argentine peso ley (used from 1970 to 1983) was retired without replacement. I wanted to bring your attention to the historic code list of ISO 4217, which contains the code ARY under the name "Peso" for Argentina. Given that there have been several Argentine pesos, this naturally presents a point of confusion. However, having looked into the background of this, I am confident that it does in fact refer to the peso ley.

I have checked both the 1978 and 1981 editions of ISO 4217. Argentina was given the currency code ARP back in 1978 (though the first edition did not assign currency names), and again in 1981 with the currency name "Peso". Crucially, however, that this did not change in 1983 when the peso ley was replaced by the peso argentino. Argentina's currency code only changed in 1985, when the peso argentino was replaced by the austral (ARA). It appears that during this period, the ISO sometimes neglected to assign new three letter codes when a country replaced its currency, and that this practice only tightened up once the 1990 edition was released, at which point the ISO retrospectively designated currency codes for the older currencies that had become ambiguous.

For example: By analogy, it therefore follows that ARY was intended for the Argentine peso ley, which was the currency in use when the 1978 and 1981 editions were released. Response: Thank you very much for your feedback on the historic context of the Argentine peso ley.
 * 1) The 1981 edition assigns Israel the currency code ILS under the name "Shekel". The latest edition assigns ILS to the Israeli new shekel, but this was only introduced in 1986. Between 1980 and 1986 Israel used the (old) shekel, which has been retrospectively given the code ILR in the historic list.
 * 2) The 1978 edition assigns Iceland the currency code ISK. The latest edition assigns ISK to the current króna, but this was only introduced in 1981 (making the 1981 edition ambiguous). The old króna has been retrospectively given the code ISJ in the historic list, however.
 * 3) The 1978 and 1981 editions assign Vietnam the currency code VND, the latter with the name "Dong". The latest edition assigns VND to the current đồng, but this was only introduced in 1985. The old đồng has been retrospectively given the code VNC in the historic list.

We have been examining the historic code lists a.o., and ARY is indeed the foreseen code for the Argentine peso ley, and a change of our corresponding authority table to be done.

Translations in all EU languages are necessary for the concept in question, therefore we will plan to have this update of the ‘Currency’ authority table ready for our publication in December 2022 (Releases - EU Vocabularies - Publications Office of the EU (europa.eu)).

Please do not hesitate to contact us further for any questions or feedback regarding the currency codes.

Thank you. Theknightwho (talk) 15:40, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Origin of historical codes
I added an indirect reference to the start of these historical denominations. They didn't exist before december 1988, when they were formally approved at a general meeting. This document is the only source as the archives send by BSO to Switserland, when they changed the agency in charge, got completely lost! May be there is a local agency or a member who has still copies of the original request done in April/May through Gunnar Sundblad (not the one of the Foundation) or the letter of approval. Until then it is difficult to confirm that the request was made by Rinet sc, located in Brussels. 2A02:A03F:6AF4:4200:10B4:1D59:9D3D:66A7 (talk) 16:03, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the info - I'd been trying to find out when these were introduced. Theknightwho (talk) 15:24, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Source of the Standard available
Template ISO 4217/cite now has the source (definition) of the ISO 4217 codes & currencies. See its documentation for use options. This article may need a check. As a bulletlist, the sources are:

DePiep (talk) 13:31, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Numeric Code in ISO 4217
The ISO 4217 published Standard has Numeric Code for the codes. However, its definition and its usage are unknown. Does someone have any decisive description of Numeric Code? So far, in Infobox currency the Numeric is to be removed. DePiep (talk) 13:16, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Citation links bug or problem
I'm seeing the links repeated four times. I'm supposing there's a problem with {\{ISO_4217/cite}} in which it no longer filters correctly. Can anyone fix it?

ADTCTalk Ctrb 06:39, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

 * . Thanks for the notification. DePiep (talk) 08:39, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Kosovo
In the long list of locations for the EUR, one is given as “Kosovo (XK)”. The “XK” is not official ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, which reserves the X… for user-defined purposes. But lots of countries do use XK for Kosovo (partial list on one of my github pages). I propose to delete the “ (XK)”. Objections? JDAWiseman (talk) 20:52, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Locations using the EUR
The long list of locations for the EUR seems to be in a jumbled order, neither alphabetically, nor by GDP. Would there be any objections to the list being ordered as: EU; then official members ordered by GDP = DE FR IT ES NL BE AT GR PT FI IE SK HR LT SI LV LU EE CY MT; then others alphabetically either by 3166 code or by GDP. JDAWiseman (talk) 20:56, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

 * They seem to be almost alphabetical. Maybe make them properly alphabetical but perhaps with the EU first?  I think that just means moving Åland and French Guiana. Certes (talk) 21:33, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, make them properly alpha but the EU can't be in it because (a) it is not a state and (b) not all members use the euro. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:06, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The EU is a pseudo-state with an approximation to a government and its own (exceptionally reserved) ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code sharing a prefix with EUR. It probably has as much claim to statehood as French Guiana, for example.  I think the EU qualifies as a "location" for the purposes of this table. Certes (talk) 10:32, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * No, it is not a pseudo-state. It is not even legally a federation, despite having many of the characteristics of one. It doesn't have a government as such: it is governed by the European Council – the heads of national governments –  which is like a collective prime-ministry, and by the Council of Ministers – the respective ministers of national governments responsible for each function (e.g., Environment). (The Commission is not a government, it is more a civil service.) All that is really beside the point: we can't say [without qualification] that the EU uses the euro, when Denmark, Poland, Sweden etc don't use it.
 * The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code "EU" is a region code, not a country code.
 * Yes, it has as much claim to statehood as French Guiana – none whatsoever. French Guiana is legally part of France, just not on the mainland (like Corsica). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:01, 3 July 2023 (UTC) [revised to add the CoM, 14:11, 3 July 2023 (UTC)]
 * it may be more a question of expression, because the euro is the official currency of the EU. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:08, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:ISO 4217


text:
Infundibulum

An infundibulum (Latin for funnel; plural, infundibula) is a funnel-shaped cavity or organ.

Anatomy

 * Brain: the pituitary stalk, also known as the infundibulum and infundibular stalk, is the connection between the hypothalamus and the posterior pituitary.
 * Hair follicle: the infundibulum is the cup or funnel in which a hair follicle grows.
 * Infundibulum (heart): The infundibulum of the heart, or conus arteriosus, is the outflow portion of the right ventricle.
 * Lung: The alveolar sacs of the lungs, from which the air chambers (alveoli) open, are also called infundibula.
 * Sinus (anatomy): The ethmoidal infundibulum is the most important of three infundibula of the nose: the frontal infundibulum and the maxillary infundibulum flow into it.
 * Infundibulum of uterine tube: the funnel-like end of the mammal oviduct nearest to the ovary.
 * Gallbladder: The Infundibulum of the gallbladder (also known as the "neck" of the gallbladder) is the end of nearest to the cystic duct, which is often dilated relative to the body of the gallbladder, and is a common site for gallstones.
 * Renal pelvis, sometimes called the renal infundibulum

Veterinary medicine

 * Infundibulum (tooth): In horses, other equines and ruminants, the infundibulum of a tooth is the central cup or funnel of tooth enamel and cementum.

Botany

 * Glossary of botanical terms: infundibular means "funnel-shaped" in plant morphology, for example referring to the corolla of some flowers.

Other uses

 * Cephalopod limb: The outer shallow cavity of a sucker on a Cephalopod limb is called an infundibulum.
 * Infundibulum (gastropod), a genus of sea snail
 * In the science fiction novel The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, a "chronosynclastic infundibulum" is a kind of wormhole through time and space, defined as "where all the different kinds of truths fit together".
 * Ian McDonald (British author) - the Everness science fiction series is about the adventures of Everett Singh, a British boy whose understanding of the use of a quantum mechanics and an infundibulum device permits him to travel to parallel worlds under the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Infundibulum


text:
Interrupt latency

In computing, interrupt latency refers to the delay between the start of an Interrupt Request (IRQ) and the start of the respective Interrupt Service Routine (ISR). For many operating systems, devices are serviced as soon as the device's interrupt handler is executed. Interrupt latency may be affected by microprocessor design, interrupt controllers, interrupt masking, and the operating system's (OS) interrupt handling methods.

Background
There is usually a trade-off between interrupt latency, throughput, and processor utilization. Many of the techniques of CPU and OS design that improve interrupt latency will decrease throughput and increase processor utilization. Techniques that increase throughput may increase interrupt latency and increase processor utilization. Lastly, trying to reduce processor utilization may increase interrupt latency and decrease throughput.

Minimum interrupt latency is largely determined by the interrupt controller circuit and its configuration. They can also affect the jitter in the interrupt latency, which can drastically affect the real-time schedulability of the system. The Intel APIC architecture is well known for producing a huge amount of interrupt latency jitter.

Maximum interrupt latency is largely determined by the methods an OS uses for interrupt handling. For example, most processors allow programs to disable interrupts, putting off the execution of interrupt handlers, in order to protect critical sections of code. During the execution of such a critical section, all interrupt handlers that cannot execute safely within a critical section are blocked (they save the minimum amount of information required to restart the interrupt handler after all critical sections have exited). So the interrupt latency for a blocked interrupt is extended to the end of the critical section, plus any interrupts with equal and higher priority that arrived while the block was in place.

Many computer systems require low interrupt latencies, especially embedded systems that need to control machinery in real-time. Sometimes these systems use a real-time operating system (RTOS). An RTOS makes the promise that no more than a specified maximum amount of time will pass between executions of subroutines. In order to do this, the RTOS must also guarantee that interrupt latency will never exceed a predefined maximum.

Considerations
Advanced interrupt controllers implement a multitude of hardware features in order to minimize the overhead during context switches and the effective interrupt latency. These include features like:

 * Minimum jitter through non-interruptible instructions
 * Zero wait states for the memory system
 * Switchable register banks
 * Tail chaining
 * Lazy stacking
 * Late arrival
 * Pop preemption
 * Sleep-on-exit feature

Also, there are many other methods hardware may use to help lower the requirements for shorter interrupt latency in order to make a given interrupt latency tolerable in a situation. These include buffers, and flow control. For example, most network cards implement transmit and receive ring buffers, interrupt rate limiting, and hardware flow control. Buffers allow data to be stored until it can be transferred, and flow control allows the network card to pause communications without having to discard data if the buffer is full.

Modern hardware also implements interrupt rate limiting. This helps prevent interrupt storms or live-locks by having the hardware wait a programmable minimum amount of time between each interrupt it generates. Interrupt rate limiting reduces the amount of time spent servicing interrupts, allowing the processor to spend more time doing useful work. Exceeding this time results in a soft (recoverable) or hard (non-recoverable) error.

title: Interrupt latency


text:
İskender kebap

İskender kebap is a Turkish dish that consists of sliced döner kebab meat topped with hot tomato sauce over pieces of pita bread, and generously slathered with melted special sheep's milk butter and yogurt. It can be prepared from thinly cut grilled lamb or chicken. The prepared doner kebab is placed in front of the burning fire at a distance of 10-15 cm from the previously lit doner kebab fire. The doner kebab is cooked slowly over this fire, and after it is cooked, it is cut thinly with a knife from top to bottom. Thus, the doner kebab is ready for service.Tomato sauce and melted butter are generally poured over the dish live at the table, for the customer's amusement.

It is one of the most popular dishes of Turkey. It takes its name from its inventor, İskender Efendi, who lived in Bursa in the late 19th century Ottoman Empire.

"Kebapçı İskender" is trademarked by the İskenderoğlu family, who still run the restaurant in Bursa. This dish is available in many restaurants throughout the country mostly under the name "İskender kebap", "Bursa kebabı", or at times with an alternative one made up by the serving restaurant such as "Uludağ kebabı".

title: İskender kebap


text:
Talk:Infinitive

Rewrite of intro?
Currently, the lead text is rather vague, and yet manages to contradict itself. I think the problem is that the term infinitive is used differently in discussing different languages. For example, most languages AFAIK have only impersonal infinitives, but Portuguese (apparently? [Indeed! Velho]) has personal infinitives; in most languages AFAIK, infinitives are verbs' "dictionary forms," but some languages have no infinitives, and Hebrew has them but uses the third-person masculine singular past indicative for dictionaries; in most languages AFAIK, an infinitive cannot be cannot be a "main verb," but French allows the infinitive to double as a sort of abstract imperative in signs/postings; and so on.

I don't think there's a universal definition of the term that applies to its (commonly accepted) uses in all languages; therefore, I think the solution is to give a first sentence that explains that the term describes similar but distinct forms in different languages and introduces a list of features of infinitives that are common among many language (together with notes on deviations from these commonalities).

It's probably also worth noting - though perhaps not in the lead text - when non-infinitive verb forms share these features; for example, English has a "gerund" form that acts the same as many other languages' infinitives, and that is indeed interchangeable (or almost interchangeable) with English's infinitive in some contexts (e.g., "I saw him run" vs. "I saw him running").

Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter? Ruakh 07:40, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree with the criticism. What characterizes the personal infinitive is that it is inflected, meaning that it has different forms according to person and number. So I cannot agree with the definition currently in the article:

 * "In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense."

 * The infinitive can be inflected to indicate person and number, in some languages. What it does not show is tense -- the time at which an action occurs --, or mood. FilipeS 23:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Non-sense: infinitives may inflect for tense: "It's good to write a book!" / "It's good to have written a book!" Or, e.g. in Portuguese, "É bom escrever um livro!" / "É bom ter escrito um livro!". Velho 00:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

 * The infinitive forms in those examples, to write, to have, escrever, and ter, are not inflected. You are confusing compound verb phrases with conjugations. FilipeS 14:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

 * 1. Oh dear! And I thought that there were compound verb forms! Ts, ts, ts... But now, how many tenses are there in English, for instance?
 * 2. Notice also that the auxiliary may be inflected for person in languages that allow it: "Foi bom teres escrito esse livro!" (It was good that you wrote that book).
 * 3. Are you sure you wanted to say "verb phrases"? Verb phrases include the complements and the adjuncts of the verb.
 * See you around! Velho 18:06, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

 * As you know, modern linguists tend not to count compound verbs as tenses (you've probably heard that "English has no future tense" at some time in your life, for example), since they are not constructed by inflecting the main verb. Otherwise, there would be no difference between synthetic languages and analytic languages, as far as verbs are concerned. FilipeS 18:46, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

 * The difference between s. languages and is a. languages is quantitative. I would almost agree with you if you said "some" instead of "modern". Check Wikipedia pages on languages' grammars: compound verb forms are included in... verb forms. So, an infinitive may be compound. It is still an infinitive, whether it is an inflected form or not. (comment continues below)

 * It is still an infinitive, whether it is an inflected form or not.

 * Did I ever claim that inflected infinitives were not infinitves? Kindly read more carefully, the next time. FilipeS 14:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

 * You've probably heard that at some time in your life that there are a few differences between compound tenses and peryphrastic structures. For instance, auxiliary verbs in compound tenses do not select any arguments. Verb complements and adjuncts cannot be inside the compound (between auxiliary and compound). Tell me: what is an auxiliary verb? By the way, have you ever noticed that Latin has a synthetic perfect infinitive? E.g., amāvisse, fecisse, etc. See you! Velho 23:17, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

 * You've probably heard that at some time in your life that there are a few differences between compound tenses and peryphrastic structures.

 * There are no semantic differences, but there are morphological differences.

 * By the way, have you ever noticed that Latin has a synthetic perfect infinitive? E.g., amāvisse, fecisse, etc.

 * So what? I never said the infinitive couldn't be inflected for aspect.

 * Here's the deal: the definition currently in the article is wrong. It's wrong if we only count inflected verb forms, as I was doing, and it's wrong if we take your approach, too. How do you propose to correct it? FilipeS 14:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I suppose the synthetic Latin forms are in fact preterite infinitives. They're used either for perfect or imperfect clauses. But the point is different: regardless the languages that you and I know, there is nothing forbiding that, in some languages, an infinitive be inflected for tense.
 * The difference between compound and peryphrastic structures may be semantical. If the semi-auxiliary in a peryphrastic structure selects arguments, then we have a semantical difference.
 * About the deal: you may have noticed that we absolutely agree that the definition is wrong. I'm not sure about the best way to fix it, or I would have done it already:
 * I guess that there is no way to define "infinitive" for every language without including, e.g., the English gerund or the Latin supine.
 * However, there should be made a difference between infinitives and (other) verbal nouns, but I don't think that this difference may be kept in every language.
 * So, we must distinguish a universal definition and a definition that works for languages that have two infinitives according to the previous definition, but only call "infinitive" one of them.
 * The universal definition must distinguish infinitives from other non-finite verbs (notice that Wikipedia's definition of non-finite verb is wrong too).
 * I guess that infinitives, in the "universal" way of seeing them, should be defined more or less this way: they function as verbs within the infinitive clause (or predicate), but they make this clause (or predicate) function as a noun.
 * The finite uses of infinitives, as in some French and Portuguese imperative sentences, should be seen as "exceptional", meaning that those infinitives are called "infinitives" only for morphological (or etymological...) reasons, but they aren't "real" infinitives.
 * If you agree with this, perhaps we could do something about the definition...
 * Please stop indenting the text, or this will soon be unreadable! :-)
 * Velho 15:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Re: "Please stop indenting the text, or this will soon be unreadable!": Sorry, that was me; I didn't think you'd mind. I think the unindented version is unreadable — it's easier for the two of you, because each of you knows what he added and what the other guy added, but for the rest of us, there's just a huge blob of text. If you could find some way to make it clearer what is responding to what, whose comments end where, etc., I'd appreciate it. Ruakh 14:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Still about tense: in some languages, finite verbs do not inflect for tense, even if they inflect for aspect or, sometimes, person. That's the case with Portuguese Creoles. Velho 16:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Then what makes them "finite"?...

BTW, these latest indentations were not my doing. FilipeS 16:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

 * They are used in finite sentences, no? And they "inflect" for aspect (with the help of a particle/prefix). They are also the head of simple declarative, imperative, etc., sentences. Velho 17:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but any inflection of a verb can be used in a finite sentence. At least, from my limited experience with languages.

As for being inflected for aspect, I think it can be argued that the same happens with the non-finite forms of Portuguese and English, for example. FilipeS 18:18, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey, shouldn't you say something about my "proposals" for a definition of infinitive? Velho 18:55, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't realised there were any. Where are they? FilipeS 19:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Wait, I get it now:

 * "In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. It is called the "infinitive" because the verb is usually not made "finite", or limited by inflection.  In some languages, however, there are inflected forms of the infinitive denoting attributes such as tense, person and number. For example, Portuguese inflects infinitives for person and number; Latin inflects infinitives for tense. In several languages, including English, compound infinitive forms are different for present and perfect (e.g., "to sneeze" and "to have sneezed"). On the other side, some languages do not have infinitives at all, for example Arabic, Bulgarian and Modern Greek. In some languages the infinitive can be construed as a verbal noun."

"On the other hand" is better. It is clearer now, although there is still a contradiction with the first sentence:

 * Infinitives are not supposed to be inflected for person, number, mood or tense, yet some are.
 * If not being inflected for person, number, mood or tense is all there is to being an infinitive, then gerunds and participles should count as infinitives, too -- which we don't "want"...

Here's a question: why did the Romans call it the "infinitive"? FilipeS 21:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible that there simply is no general definition of an infinitive? I mean, I'm pretty sure that if English were some newly-discovered language that linguists were first characterizing, they'd label our gerund as a kind of infinitive. And with Portuguese, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't label its personal infinitive as an infinitive at all. I stand by my original proposal, which is to explain that the word infinitive means different things in different languages, give some features of infinitives that are common in most languages, and discuss variations on such. Ruakh 21:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

And perhaps different things for linguists and in traditional grammar... FilipeS 22:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Come on, Filipe. I was talking about the sentences above numbered from 1 to 7.
 * The Latin perfect infinitive and the Portuguese personal infinitive are infinitives because they cannot stand alone in a simple sentence, the clause they're the head of functions as a noun within the main clause, and the infinitives themselves can be treated more or less as nouns (although they function as verbs inside the infinitive clause).
 * Velho 13:11, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

 * There is a reason not to call the English gerung an "infinitive": it is an infinitive only sometimes.
 * "Eating good food is great." This is syntactically speaking an infinitive. The embedded clause ("Eating good food") works as a noun (or a NP).
 * "She's a sleeping beauty." Syntactically, this is not an infinitive. "Sleeping" functions as an adjective.
 * "I broke it throwing it against the wall." This is not an infinitive either. "Throwing" functions as an adverb.
 * Velho 13:19, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Of your examples, only the first uses a gerund; in your second and third examples, sleeping and throwing are participles. Further, the English bare infinitive cannot serve as a noun (*"Eat good food is great"), while the to-infinitive, which can serve as a noun, can also serve as an adjective or adverb: "This food is to die for (i.e. worth dying for)", "I have so much to do (i.e. that I need to do or that I can do)", "I went there to see what I could see (i.e. in order to see what I could see)". So, by traditional definitions, the gerund is more consistently a noun than the infinitive is. Ruakh 14:22, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

 * About indenting and readability: Ruakh, I think indents are ok, but they may go up and down, and not necessarily always up! I also suppose that the text of the section will be more readable if everybody always writes at the end of it. Velho 14:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

 * About gerund: you're obviously right. Sorry. About the to-infinitive: hmm, hmm, hmm... You're probably right here too. Anyway, the noun thing is not a traditional definition. Velho 14:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * And then again... Are you sure about the third example ("I broke it throwing it against the wall.")? Is it a participle? Indeed, I guess gerund was named "gerund" because the Latin equivalent to these sentences is made with a gerund or a gerundive (as amando or amandus/a/um). Velho 16:38, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Re: Only adding comments to the end: yeah, that should help.

 * Re: The name gerund: It definitely does come from Latin; indeed, the OED defines gerund as "A form of the Lat. vb. capable of being construed as a n., but retaining the regimen of the vb. Hence applied to forms functionally equivalent in other langs., e.g. to the Eng. verbal noun in -ing when used rather as a part of the vb. than as a n." That said, it seems to be well accepted that a gerund is always a noun. (That said, it also seems to be well accepted that a participle is always an adjective; in your throwing example, it's construed as an adjective modifying I. That's why people speak of dangling participles, which are participles that are separated from the nouns they're supposed to modify to the point that the noun they seem to modify isn't the noun they're supposed to. I think it makes more sense to take the participle as an adverb in this case, as Spanish does, but *shrug*.) Incidentally, the OED's first citation for gerund is the quote, "There be moreouer belongyng to the infinitiue mode of verbes certayn voyces called gerundes..whiche haue bothe the actyue and passiue significacion," which is a different way of looking at it from ours. (Not that a quote from 1513 is really relevant to the modern sense of the word, but I thought it might interest you.)

 * Ruakh 17:31, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts on your reflections above, Velho...

It seems that there are two different concepts of "infinitive" (at least):

 * One is the old notion of infinitive, in the sense that it has been traditionally applied -- and still is -- to ancient Greek and ancient Latin, and to other Indo-European languages, but which may well not be relevant to other language families.
 * The other is a modern, syntactic definition which is general enough to be applied to any language, but won't necessarily coincide with the old concept of "infinitive" in all cases.

Why not discuss both in the article?

Another thing is that, particularly judging from your comment nr. 6, you are regarding the "infinitive" as an essentially syntactic concept ("It's part of a noun clause, ergo it's an infinitive"). That may be a useful perspective for those who study language from a linguistic point of view, but it seems to me that language learners are likely to be more interested in seeing the infinitive as a morphological category ("How many different forms of this verb-thingy do I have to memorize, and which is the simplest?") FilipeS 18:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, we're not far from complete consensus... I vote for two definitions, one of them morphological, language dependent and aimed at "language learners"; the other one syntactical and more useful "from a linguistic point of view"... You (Ruakh and Filipe) could go ahead and write them out, couldn't you?... ;-) Velho 23:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, after our conversation, I don't think I'm qualified to do that. :o FilipeS 16:32, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposed wording for lead text.
Here's my proposed lead text:

 * In grammar, the infinitive is a non-finite verb that exists in many languages; in English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the preposition to: so, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition of infinitive that applies to all languages; however, in languages that have infinitives, they generally have most of the following properties:

 * They head verb phrases which can contain objects, adverbs, predicatives, and so on.
 * They function as other lexical categories — usually nouns — within the clauses that contain them, for example by serving as the subject of another verb.
 * They do not represent any of the verb's arguments (as employer and employee do).
 * They are not inflected to agree with any subject, and their subject, if they have one, is not case-marked as such.
 * They cannot serve as the only verb of a sentence.
 * They are the verb's lemma or citation form (the name of the verb, often regarded as its basic uninflected form), used in giving the definition or conjugation of the verb.
 * They do not have tense, mood, aspect, and/or voice, or they are limited in the range of tenses, moods, aspects, and/or voices that they can use.
 * They are used with auxiliary verbs.

 * However, it bears repeating that none of the above is a defining quality of the infinitive; infinitives do not have all these properties in every language, and other verb forms may have one or more of them. (For example, English's gerunds and participles have most of these properties as well.)

Then I figured the sections on individual languages could mention the ways they deviate from this list.

What do y'all think?

Ruakh 02:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I think it is a very good idea and it is very well done. Perhaps the wording of the first paragraph could be better, and one or two of the "properties" might be changed (especially the first one), but I think Ruakh's text could be inserted in the article right now. Velho 02:46, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The first "property" could perhaps be "Infinitives head verb phrases which, as any verb phrases, can contain objects, adverbs, predicatives, and so on, and be c-commanded by a subject." Velho 02:51, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Hmm. It seems to me that in English, the c-commanding can go the other way: in for him to do it, it seems that to do it c-commands for him and hence him, but him only c-commands for. And in French, in something like J'ai demandé à Jean de le faire (literally  I{{'ve asked} {to Jean} {of {it {to do}}}} , really I asked Jean to do it), it seems that neither of Jean and faire c-commands the other, as each is buried within its own prepositional phrase. Now granted, your wording only says that an infinitive can be c-commanded by a subject, but to me that sounds like "An infinitive can have a subject, in which case the subject c-commands it," even if what you meant was "An infinitive can have a subject, in which case the subject may c-command it." Ruakh 12:58, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Well... I just think that we should say that an infinitive can have a subject (as much as an object or an adjunct). Another thing: clearly, infinitives are non-finite verbs, but the current definition of "non-finite verb" is clearly wrong, especially because ti says that non-finite verbs cannot be "limited", which is wrong in every sense. It also says that non-finite verbs cannot work as predicates, which is even worse. Velho 18:04, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems like the right direction to take, but I have a few comments:
 * They cannot serve as the only verb of a sentence.

Tone this down a little bit. Quite a few languages use infinitives as imperatives. (I know that according to Velho that makes them not-real-infinitives, but still...) I suggest "They do not serve as the only verb of a sentence."
 * They are the verb's lemma or citation form (the name of the verb, often regarded as its basic uninflected form), used in giving the definition or conjugation of the verb.

Tone this down, as well. Infinitive = name of the verb is actually a very modern-Western-European notion. In classical Greek and classical Latin, for example, verbs were named by the first person of the present tense (amo, canto, etc.) Besides, some languages have no infinitive at all.
 * They do not have tense, mood, aspect, and/or voice, or they are limited in the range of tenses, moods, aspects, and/or voices that they can use.

How are you going to distinguish infinitives from gerunds and participles?... FilipeS 18:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Replying to both Velho and FilipeS at once:

Re: "I just think that we should say that an infinitive can have a subject [...]": my text already does say that: "They are not inflected to agree with any subject, and their subject, if they have one, is not case-marked as such."

Re: the problems with Non-finite verb: I agree, and that really must be fixed, but I don't see that that affects this article.

Re: languages that use infinitives as imperatives: How about, "They cannot serve as the only verb of a declarative sentence"?

Re: the infinitive being the name of the verb: Well, how common is it? If >50% of languages with infinitives use them as lemmata, then given all the disclaimers surrounding the list, I think it's valid to include it without comment. If not, then I suppose it can be tacked on afterward in its own paragraph or something.

Re: Distinguishing from gerunds and participles: Unless someone can find a source that explains the difference cross-linguistically, I don't think we can really draw that distinction ourselves.

Ruakh 20:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

 * A suggestion for the first paragraph and the first property:
 * In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the preposition to: so, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition of infinitive that applies to all languages; however, in languages that have infinitives, they generally have most of the following properties:
 * In most of their uses, infinitives are non-finite verbs.

 * My idea is to stress that, within each language, infinitives are defined firstly by a morphological criterion, that is, only after we identify a morphological category in verbs of a certain language will we call it "infinitive". And we will do it if it has some or most of Ruakh's properties. I suppose that we could even write "...name for certain morphological verb forms...". Velho 23:20, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, since we seem to be agreed that this text is better than what was there before, I've instated it (after incorporating some of the changes the two of you suggested). Further changes are of course welcome; I just figured that since the previous text was obviously bad, we might as well replace it as soon as possible and make further improvements afterward. Ruakh 03:15, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

It's great! Now I think it could be useful to have a first section (after introduction) called "Infinitives and their definition across languages" stating how each of the general "properties" can not be applied in some languages. I'll do it today or tomorrow. Velho 18:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I look forward to it. :-) Ruakh 20:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Alternate for INFINITIVE
Infinitive is also the name of a management consulting company based in the DC Metropolitan area (US). www.infinitive.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.183.210.226 (talk) 18:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC).

Infinitve inflection in NIA languages
"These are the only Indo-European languages that allow infinitives to take person and number endings. " This is not true. in NIA (New-Indo-Arian) such as Hindi, the infinitive can be inflected for gender, case etc. As in "jaane ke liye" (from the infinitive Jaana - To Go, Jaane - oblique case) or "meri jaani ho cuka hai" (Jaani for female gender). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.1.118.212 (talk • contribs).

Dare as the main verb
This seems to be able to take both the bare and full infinitive. To my mind anyway, both of these seem grammatically correct and mean the same thing:

He dares oppose us. He dares to oppose us.

Now, my source for the direct quote of the first is from C&C3: Kane's Wrath (level 2 or 3 I think), so I don't know if the writers used bad grammer, but it was definitely "He dares oppose" and not "He dare oppose" as the article on modal auxillary verbs suggests. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.245.148 (talk) 01:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

 * What you've come across is a verb that can act as a main verb -
 * He dares to oppose us.
 * Does he dare to oppose us?
 * He doesn't dare to oppose us.
 * and an auxiliary verb:
 * He dare oppose us. (Remember, you can't conjugate auxiliary verbs. What I've observed in video games, which Kane's Wrath is, is that sometimes the designers try to sound archaic or old-fashioned but they make mistakes. An imaginary example would be "He doth protest too much" when it should be "He dost protest too much." Impresses your average gamers but not your erudite ones.:)
 * Dare he oppose us?
 * He dare not oppose us.

 * In my opinion, nowadays we use dare as an auxiliary only in certain expressions, for example:
 * How dare he?! (Not "How does he dare?!)
 * I dare say... (Not "I dare to say...")
 * DBlomgren (talk) 19:27, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

 * I half-agree. I do think main-verb dare can take a bare infinitive for many speakers; for example, "doesn't dare do" gets 220 hits on Google Books, which isn't a ton but is far more than the 116 that "doesn't dare to do" gets. Further, there's not a clear line between dare as a modal auxiliary and dare as a main verb that takes a bare infinitive complement; some cases are clearly one or the other, but "I daresay" could be taken either way. —Ruakh TALK 20:38, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

 * I argue that in this case "He" is the subject, "dare" would be the verb, and since "to oppose us" clarifies what is being dared, it is the object of the sentence-- a gerund phrase, and not the main verb. In other words, "dare" is not an auxiliary verb at all-- in any of the examples provided.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.181.44.227 (talk) 04:32, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Is 'does' an infinitive?
From the article: "...the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, does and to do, is and to be, and so on are infinitives."

I don't see how 'does,' or 'is' are infinitives. They are the third person singular form of the verb "to do" and "to be." (he/she/it does/is)

I think the intro could be better written along the lines of: "The infinitive form of a verb carries no inflectional information of the person, or number of any subject that may (or not) be involved; nor the mood, voice, or tense of the verb itself." It's short, sweet, and is true of all languages.

 * Quite right. The infinitive is a non-finite form, while is/does are finite verbs. --Doric Loon (talk) 10:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Modern Greek
An old Hellenic languages section was placed within comment tags so that it was invisible, and a new In Greek section was created. I've merged the two, but now the section is kind of a mess. Is there anyone who knows how the Modern Greek infinitives developed and how they are used and who can clean the section up? I'm familiar with Ancient Greek, but at a loss with regard to Modern Greek. — Eru·tuon 22:32, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd like to see a reputable source (i.e. a scholarly work by a linguist, not a 'teach yourself' grammar) which says that Modern Greek has an infinitive. (When I worked on computer parsing of Modern Greek, the standard work in English was Mackridge, P. (1985). The Modern Greek Language. Oxford University Press. Doubtless there are more recent ones now.) Peter coxhead (talk) 19:34, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Should "most infinitives can take an object" be added to the "shopping list"?
The 2nd paragraph of the intro of this article is a laundry list of properties that "most" infinitives have "most" of. Isn't it true that, in most languages that have infinitives, the infinitive of a transitive verb can take an object? Eldin raigmore (talk) 21:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Intro's "laundry list" needs references.
Eldin raigmore (talk) 21:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * They head verb phrases which can contain objects, adverbs, predicatives, and so on.
 * They function as other lexical categories — usually nouns — within the clauses that contain them, for example by serving as the subject of another verb.
 * They do not represent any of the verb's arguments (as employer and employee do).
 * They are not inflected to agree with any subject, and their subject, if they have one, is not case-marked as such.
 * They cannot serve as the only verb of a sentence.
 * They are the verb's lemma or citation form (the name of the verb, often regarded as its basic uninflected form), used in giving the definition or conjugation of the verb.
 * They do not have tense, mood, aspect, and/or voice, or they are limited in the range of tenses, moods, aspects, and/or voices that they can use.
 * They are used with auxiliary verbs.

Terminology as theory
Much of the article, and the comments here, are written as though there were a 'thing' which has the name 'infinitive'. Actually, linguistic terminology, like scientific terminology, arises from and is embedded in theories about language. English used to be described as if it were a language like Classical Latin or Greek; in this framework, an English 'infinitive' is whatever seems to be analogous to an infinitive in those languages. It's questionable whether 'infinitive' is a useful term at all in a truly stand-alone description of modern English. If it is, the case needs to be made purely in terms of modern English, and not by reference to other languages.

A similar argument applies to modern Greek. To call the form of the verb which is used after the auxiliary έχω (to form various tenses which didn't exist in classical Greek) an 'infinitive' is hard to justify by any definition. The form can't be used anywhere else, which is quite uncharacteristic of infinitives.

More generally, the entire article is grossly under-referenced. Inline citations are needed all over it to demonstrate that editors are not just expressing their pet views. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:22, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Quite right. You and I would not be readily invited to speak at conventional colloquies regarding grammar. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 04:57, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Use of International Phonetic Alphabet
Can someone who is knowledgable of Greek phonetics add the IPA transcription where it needs to be? It's quite unprofessional to not include IPA transcriptions. Not everyone reads Greek, and using only Greek without phonetic transcription (and I mean *real* phonetic transcription, not Romanization) makes that part of the article inaccessible to non-experts.

14.53.183.65 (talk) 01:19, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Portuguese infinitive inflected for aspect?
The article says:

 * The Portuguese personal infinitive has no proper tenses, only aspects (imperfect and perfect), but tenses can be expressed using 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.

Does Portuguese have any kind of non-periphrastic aspect marking in infinitives? 143.54.6.199 (talk) 19:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

On recent edits regarding English section
I have reverted some edits by Capnprep. I'll address a few of his concerns:

1. Do as aspectual auxiliary. This is the only function of DO as an auxiliary verb and is its primary function within the language. The non-durational aspects in English (everything not progressive/continuous aspects) are marked by the aspectual auxiliary DO followed by its subordinate in bare form. English has two aspectual auxiliaries, DO & BE.

2. Do is not a modal auxiliary. It does not express emphasis / emphatic mood. Rather, DO when used as an aspectual auxiliary may be emphasized just like any other word in a sentence. There is no emphatic modal auxiliary in English. English simply uses vocal stress (or in type, boldface or ALL CAPS) to emphasize the desired element.

3. Perfection / perfecting auxiliary is valid. Perfect is not an aspect but rather a verb in any aspect may be perfected. Perfection is a grammatical category used to express completeness of a verb.

4. I have changed the repeated phrasing "Most auxiliaries" / "Most modals" to ...some... because this sort of generalisation is simply untrue and unfounded. If anything, of the modal auxiliaries, those that subordinate to infinitive form are at best in approximately 50% distribution to those that do not.

5. In the discussion of the various forms following make, I have once again removed the claim for passive voice. That usage is not in passive voice at all as BE is not acting as a vocal auxiliary but rather BE+MADE is acting as a single unit forming a modal auxiliary. Whereas MAKE as a modal auxiliary conveys internal force and subordinates to bare form, BE+MADE expresses external force and subordinates to infinitive form.

6. Within the section on defective verbs I have eliminated some poor and misleading examples while rewording others. That section comes close to conflating infintives with infinitive form and as worded was misleading.

Please do not revert any of these changes without first addressing and resolving these points here on the talk page.Drew.ward (talk) 07:25, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

 * OK.
 * Since there is disagreement about whether do should be called "modal", "aspectual", "dummy", or something else, and no particular need to decide one way or another in this article, what's wrong with just calling it an "auxiliary"? If you keep adding "aspectual", I will keep removing it.
 * Your analysis of be made is your analysis. If you disagree with the existing statement, you are free to tag it or remove it. You can't replace it with your own unsourced analysis.
 * I agree that the "defective verbs" section is poorly written, but your edits do not improve it. You confuse defectiveness (not having certain forms) and syncretism (not having distinct forms). And you are wrong: do does change form for tense and agreement. It simply doesn't have infinitive forms.
 * As you know, not everyone agrees that be able to, have to, and be going to are modal auxiliary verbs. And maybe not everyone will agree about "compound verbs" or "periphrases", so I'm going to replace it with the generic "multi-word expression".
 * "Perfection", "perfecting", "perfected" are not standard. If they represent a minority or individual analysis, they need to be sourced, and one might also ask the question "Is this article about infinitives the right place to introduce a detailed analysis of the English aspectual system?" In the meantime, I am restoring the standard terminology.
 * The onus is on you, as the editor attempting to add new content, to provide reliable sources for all information. Starting a talk page discussion is a good idea, but until you manage to achieve consensus here, your proposed edits should not appear in the article. CapnPrep (talk) 13:23, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The onus is on you as much as it is on anyone else. Your claim that "be made" is in the passive voice is no more validly sourced than my claim that it is not.  I can provide linguistic proof that my analysis is correct that meshes with multiple standard approaches as well as working cross-lingually.  Unless you can do the same, you have no right to push one opinion (yours) over another.  If it's in the passive voice, show how and why it is, and to the same end, provide an example of that sentence in the active voice.  If it's passive now, that should be quite easy.

 * I am not wrong that do changes for for tense and agreement. Do you not realise this is present tense and marked for the second person singular?  Did you not realise it at the time that it could be marked for past tense?  Does such an analysis not make sense now?  If not why?
 * As editors we all share the same onus or responsibility to validate and source claims made in an article. Before you make changes, validate them and do so not just by quoting a grammar guide or saying just because.  Prove your views are correct!  Especially if you are going to demand someone else do so, prove your own first.  And, if neither party can provide acceptable proof beyond a list citing other people pushing their same point without acceptable proof either, then both versions need to be removed.Drew.ward (talk) 14:59, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

 * I know that do changes for tense and agreement. I invite you to read what I wrote above a second time, more carefully. You are the one that wrote in the article that "[defective verbs] are limited in form and lack infinitives, both bare and full, and do not change form to convey information regarding tense, aspect, perfection, nor agreement for person and number. This is true of auxiliary do…" And you just restored this same misinformation.
 * You misunderstand the notions of "validation" ad "sourcing" in Wikipedia. You can argue for your favorite analysis all you want here on Talk, but nothing goes in the article if there is no reliable source to back it up. A Wikipedia article must cite other people, and it must not do anything beyond citing other people. If you have difficulty understanding or accepting this policy, then keep your edits in Talk or in your User space, and stay out of the Main space.
 * You are correct that any unsourced material can be contested and removed at any time. I am reverting to revision 490459315 of 3 May, before our latest series of edits. You may remove any unsourced statements that you disagree with from this version, but any edits seeking to replace them with other unsourced material will be reverted. CapnPrep (talk) 15:38, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Subjunctive
Why in the bar at the bottom of the article there is not the subjunctive mode for verbs? --Dejudicibus (talk) 18:26, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Presumably because it's a guide to lexical rather than grammatical categories - but in that case, I'm not sure why infinitive and so on are there (or what it's doing on the infinitive article). Victor Yus (talk) 21:17, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Use of oblique or objective case for subject of an infinitive
English usages such as "I want him to stop" or "For them to arrive on time, they'll have to leave now." illustrate the rule or principle that when an infinitive has a subject, the subject should be in the oblique (a.k.a. objective or accusative) case rather than the nominative (subjective) case ordinarily used in finite verb constructions such as "He stopped." I added this fact to the English language section of the Infinitive article, but wonder how widespread this rule is in other languages. I vaguely recall an analogous rule for Latin, that the infinitive takes a subject in the accusative rather than the nominative case. In English, usages such as "I want him to stop" are somewhat clouded by possible ambiguity as to whether "him" is the subject of "to stop" or the object of "want", with the infinitive "to stop" functioning adjectivally as a modifier of "him." However I think the second parsing is less reasonable. I am at best an amateur grammarian; attention from an expert, both in English and other languages, would be most welcome.CharlesHBennett (talk) 00:05, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Your vague remembrance of Latin is right. Latin and Ancient Greek infinitives both usually have subjects in the accusative. The first example you gave might be translated this way in Latin and Greek. (Not sure about the choice of verbs in both and voice in Greek, but the syntax is at least okay.) Similar to the English, there's an accusative, infinitive, and main verb (literally "Him stop I desire").
 * Eum desinere volo.
 * αὐτὸν παύειν ἐθέλω.
 * — Eru·tuon 00:51, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I added a section mentioning this, and referring to existing articles on Accusative and infinitive and exceptional case-marking which describe the phenomenon in more technical detail.CharlesHBennett (talk) 04:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Romanian – use of să in clauses replacing infinitive
Is the Romanian word să not a subordinating conjunction rather than a preposition? If someone can argue that it is indeed a preposition, please let me know. I do not regard myself as an expert in Romanian, but the only grammar I can find agrees with me.

If nobody gets back to me, I shall change the wording. LynwoodF (talk) 21:37, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

 * No one has commented on this point, but I have found other grammars which confirm my view. So I have now made the change. LynwoodF (talk) 21:26, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

The task to be completed
I don't think the article explains cases like "the task to be completed". Not exactly sure how to analyze it, though it seems to be a noun phrase overall. Is the infinitive is acting as an adjective phrase that comes after the noun? Or this is actually a clause with "completed" as the main verb constituent, with the clause overall acting as a noun? -- Beland (talk) 01:25, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

dictionary form
Unless someone posts a well-reasoned objection, I plan to (1) substitute "canonical form" for "dictionary form" in this article, (2) create a redirect page for canonical form, i.e., as linked to infinitive, (3) route the dictionary form article's link from lemma (morphology) to infinitive, and (4) edit the lemma (morphology) page accordingly re its mentions of dictionary form and canonical form. Somebody, please convince me otherwise or else beat me to it and save me the trouble. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 16:57, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

 * "Canonical form" is a new one on me; I would have said "citation form". Normally I should think all these terms are much of a muchness, but in the specific case of the English infinitive, I wonder if there is a slight distinction: "go" is the lemma or dictionary form, i.e. that would be the form of the entry in a dictionary; "to go" is the citation form, i.e. that's how we cite the verb when we're talking about it. Don't know if that's just me. In any other language or with any other part of speech there would be no such distinction, of course. The important thing for Wikipedia choices is to follow common usage, and from that point of view, this might be useful, though it's certainly not the definitive statement. Doric Loon (talk) 17:25, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Are you sure that "canonical form" doesn't have other more common meanings, like in ecclesiology? Doric Loon (talk) 17:27, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, look here: Canonical form - it's main use is in maths. See also Canonical form (chemistry). For linguistics, it looks like we already have a consensus to use lemma, and all the others redirect there, so probably we should stick with that. By the way, I hope you are remembering that it is not only verbs that have lemmata / citation forms, and that in many languages the citation form of a verb is not the infinitive, so whatever you do, be sure to do justice to that. Doric Loon (talk) 17:38, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * So, you know what I'm getting at. I'd say the main issue is how average readers are likely to be out of their element upon finding that dictionary form links to lemma. "Citation form" seems only slightly more accessible. "Canonical form" versus Canonical form is easy enough to sort out via changes to the respective disambiguation pages. It just takes going to the trouble of properly linking stuff.
 * I don't see the ecclesiastic sense as problematic since the chemists and mathematicians have already hijacked "canonical" for their own purposes. Somewhere (I don't immediately recall where) the linguistic/lexicography worlds have followed since I didn't originate what I've proposed. Honestly, for the uninitiated who search on "dictionary form" and get redirected to "lemma", I fear they get much more than they bargained for, or much less, depending on how you look at it. I can just see some poor reader wondering, "Lemma: Is that a type of bean? A city in Peru?" Kent Dominic·(talk) 22:29, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @Kent Dominic I'd take a holiday in that city! I'd eat the beans! :-)
 * I don't know if this is as hard as you think. "Dictionary form" is certainly the easiest of the four terms to understand, and I think anyone would get what that means. If you click on that and it takes you to "lemma", the average reader is going to think "oh, that's the technical term for dictionary form", and sure enough the first two sentences say that the four terms mean the same thing, and define them with an example. I agree that the "lemma" article needs to be improved, but the link itself seems fine to me. The real question is whether you want to use easy words like "dictionary form" or words that specialists actually prefer, like "lemma". My own feeling is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia rather than a school text, so it should aim a little higher in the choice of terminology, and then help people to find their way into that.
 * Surely "citation form" (which obviously has something to do with citing) is more accessible than "canonical form" (what does that actually mean?); but since they are in the middle - neither the simplest nor the most technical of the four - I would not use either of them here. I just found another one: "identity word" (in Wiktionary under the citations for "lemma"), so if we divert from common usage and all start picking what we like best, there could be chaos.
 * The only reason I mentioned uses in maths and chemistry was because the statistical chart I shared with you is skewed if "canonical usage" gets lots of hits that are not relevant to our topic. Doric Loon (talk) 22:53, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * We agree that "dictionary form" is the easiest to grasp. Here's a bit more of what concerns me
 * There's no convention equating lemma to dictionary form. Just look at the lemma article and you'll see canonical form, dictionary form, and citation form as synonyms. The only cite given in the lede definition refers to canonical form. Maybe that's where I got the idea.
 * Re this article, "the infinitive is the basic dictionary form of a verb" invokes an equivocal use of "the", since there are more than one infinitive form (e.g., OED mostly uses bare infinitive verbs for its entries and Merriam-Webster mostly uses to-infinitive phrases).
 * Re dictionary forms in general: What might be considered canonical (i.e., "conforming to a general rule or acceptable procedure : ORTHODOX", to quote Merriam-Webster) vis-a-vis verbs might not always constitute an infinitive since other verb forms  are frequently entered as dictionary headwords, esp. when the verbs are couched in an adjectival sense (e.g., landed or played out), in an imperative sense (e.g., "give it a go"), or in a nominal sense (e.g., "built-in").
 * I'm not ranting i.e., not here, anyway  against the dictionaries' random way of tagging their entries; I'm just saying that infinitive = dictionary form is equivocally put in this article, and that "infinitive is a canonical form..." is more in line with dictionaries' vagaries. Changing that one word will take about an hour's time due to the crosslinks, however, so I'm not eager to do it. Kent Dominic·(talk) 00:38, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @Kent Dominic Ah, I see. At some point I'd like to do some work on lemma, but there's no rush. Doric Loon (talk) 17:40, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Infinitive