Question about infinitive
Hello linguaphiles,
I've been thinking about this: why is it that in some languages the infinitive is considered the canonical/dictionary form of the verb (lemma?), and in other languages, not?
I know there are many languages that don't have an infinitive at all (Bulgarian and Greek among European languages, also Arabic, Japanese and definitely a ton of other non-European languages) - would also be interesting to understand why and how this happened - but that's a different story. However, all languages I speak/understand myself do have an infinitive, but it is not always the dictionary form. Like, for example, in Latin, the dictionary form is first person singular present active; in Hebrew, it's third person singular masculine past tense. And this, although both Latin and Hebrew do have an infinitive, which is used pretty much as in other European languages: "errare humanum est" - "to err is human", "ani rotza lilmod" - "I want to learn". The Latin infinitive even looks exactly the same as its counterparts in modern Romance languages. (I know Hebrew is not a European language.)
When someone asked this question to our Hebrew teacher, she went to great lengths explaining how much easier the personal forms are to learn for a beginner than the infinitive. I, for one, can't see anything especially difficult about the Hebrew infinitive, and also, this surely can't be the reason. So what's the catch?
I admit I didn't go further in my search than a couple of Wikipedia articles and the first page on Google. So if you have a (simple) explanation or could direct me to one, I would much appreciate. Similar examples from other languages are also welcome. Also, sorry if this has been discussed before.
(Since I'm a first-time poster: native Russian speaker, learned to a varying extent English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, some very basic Italian and some Latin now almost completely forgotten - so these are basically the languages I draw my observations from.)
Thanks!
I've been thinking about this: why is it that in some languages the infinitive is considered the canonical/dictionary form of the verb (lemma?), and in other languages, not?
I know there are many languages that don't have an infinitive at all (Bulgarian and Greek among European languages, also Arabic, Japanese and definitely a ton of other non-European languages) - would also be interesting to understand why and how this happened - but that's a different story. However, all languages I speak/understand myself do have an infinitive, but it is not always the dictionary form. Like, for example, in Latin, the dictionary form is first person singular present active; in Hebrew, it's third person singular masculine past tense. And this, although both Latin and Hebrew do have an infinitive, which is used pretty much as in other European languages: "errare humanum est" - "to err is human", "ani rotza lilmod" - "I want to learn". The Latin infinitive even looks exactly the same as its counterparts in modern Romance languages. (I know Hebrew is not a European language.)
When someone asked this question to our Hebrew teacher, she went to great lengths explaining how much easier the personal forms are to learn for a beginner than the infinitive. I, for one, can't see anything especially difficult about the Hebrew infinitive, and also, this surely can't be the reason. So what's the catch?
I admit I didn't go further in my search than a couple of Wikipedia articles and the first page on Google. So if you have a (simple) explanation or could direct me to one, I would much appreciate. Similar examples from other languages are also welcome. Also, sorry if this has been discussed before.
(Since I'm a first-time poster: native Russian speaker, learned to a varying extent English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, some very basic Italian and some Latin now almost completely forgotten - so these are basically the languages I draw my observations from.)
Thanks!