# Why Spanish has no inflected infinitive



## Beachxhair

I've read about the reasons why Portuguese does, but I can't seem to find any interesting material written on why Spanish hasn't developed an inflected infinitive.

Fonatana suggests in his In search of the personal infinitive that the existence of 'personal a' in Spanish is one of the reasons, but my lecturer at university (an expert in the field, who has written lots of papers) says this is wrong.

Does anyone know what characteristics of the Spanish language inhibited the development of an inflected infinitive? Or, the absence of characteristics which engendered its development in Portuguese? 

Thank you


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## Angelo di fuoco

My - uneducated - guess is that the conservative syntax of Portuguese, being rather close to Latin, is responsible for this particular feature of Portuguese, and that Spanish was just not conservative enough.


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## Peterdg

Wouldn't the right question be: "Why did Portuguese develop an inflected infinitive?" instead of asking why the other language did not?


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## Gavril

Is it entirely true that Spanish hasn't developed a conjugated infinitive? I've heard Spanish speakers say sentences like,

_Tendrás que hablar más alto para yo poder oírte._ "You'll have to speak up for me to be able to hear you."

Here, "yo poder" seems to be treated as a unit, since one normally expects *mí *rather than *yo* after the preposition _para_. I don't see a clear difference between this construction and Portuguese _para eu poder (ouvir-te)_, although admittedly some of the other personal forms in Portuguese (_podermos, poderem_ etc.) have developed further along these lines than Spanish has.


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## Angelo di fuoco

The Portuguese personal infinitive did not develop morphologically from the verb infinitive - or, at least, not exclusively from the infinitive, but does also show influences from the Latin imperfect subjunctive. This would explain the endings of forms other than the 1st & 3rd person singular, which are identical to the uninflected infinitive.


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## CapnPrep

Beachxhair said:


> Fonatana suggests in his In search of the personal infinitive that the existence of 'personal a' in Spanish is one of the reasons, but my lecturer at university (an expert in the field, who has written lots of papers) says this is wrong.


Who is "Fonatana"? The author of this article is John Lipski, and he cites Brakel (1980) for the connection with personal _a_. And can you share with us why your lecturer rejects this analysis?


Gavril said:


> Is it entirely true that Spanish hasn't developed a conjugated infinitive?


Yes, because as you mentioned, the infinitive in Spanish does not take personal endings. The _yo _in _para yo poder _is a syntactic element and does not form a morphological unit with the infinitive.


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## Gavril

CapnPrep said:


> Yes, because as you mentioned, the infinitive in Spanish does not take personal endings. The _yo _in _para yo poder _is a syntactic element and does not form a morphological unit with the infinitive.



I don't know if we can be sure that it doesn't form a morphological unit, but discussing that would bring us too far off topic. It seems as though the question is about why Spanish doesn't have forms corresponding specifically to Portuguese _poderes / podermos / poderdes / poderem_ (since the 1st/3rd singular forms are equally conjugated in both languages: _para yo/él poder_ and _para eu/ele poder_).


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## Hulalessar

Never heard of an inflected infinitive until today! Investigation reveals that Portuguese and Galician are the only European languages which allow the infinitive to be inflected for number and person.


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## Nino83

Gavril said:


> _para yo/él poder_ and _para eu/ele poder_).



Only the first (_para yo poder_) is unexpected, because the second is normal (_é difficile per lui credere_, in Italian), being a prepositional personal pronoun (_él, ele, lui, lui_). 

It would be interesting to know if this Spanish structure (preposition + subject pronoun + infinitive, only for the first singular person) is influenced by Portuguese language. 

It could be.


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## CapnPrep

Gavril said:


> I don't know if we can be sure that it doesn't form a morphological unit, but discussing that would bring us too far off topic.


It is easy enough to demonstrate, since you can insert other words, e.g. _para yo por fin poder_.


Nino83 said:


> Only the first (_para yo poder_) is unexpected, because the second is normal (_é difficile per lui credere_, in Italian), being a prepositional personal pronoun (_él, ele, lui, lui_).


Your Italian example is not relevant, since the pronoun is not part of the infinitival clause (for example you can also say _Per lui è difficile credere_). The construction we are talking about would be something like _Devi parlare più forte per io/me/egli/lui poter sentirti_. And that is not possible in Italian, is it?


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## Nino83

CapnPrep said:


> The construction we are talking about would be something like _Devi parlare più forte per io/me/egli/lui poter sentirti_. And that is not possible in Italian, is it?



Ah, ok, you're right, it's not possible in Italian (now I got that it was a final clause).


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## Angelo di fuoco

Nino83 said:


> Only the first (_para yo poder_) is unexpected, because the second is normal (_é difficile per lui credere_, in Italian), being a prepositional personal pronoun (_él, ele, lui, lui_).



Con la differenza che "lui" in italiano classico (son ben conscio che in italiano contemporaneo le cose stanno in modo diverso) è complemento indiretto (in spagnolo, le) e non può essere soggetto d'una frase che in virtú della sua funzione di pronome tonico (in spagnolo, él). In spagnolo "le" non può mai essere soggetto d'una frase.


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## Nino83

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Con la differenza che "lui" in italiano classico (son ben conscio che in italiano contemporaneo le cose stanno in modo diverso) è complemento indiretto (in spagnolo, le) e non può essere soggetto d'una frase che in virtú della sua funzione di pronome tonico (in spagnolo, él). In spagnolo "le" non può mai essere soggetto d'una frase.



No, dative case for _egli_ is _gli_ (= Spanish_ le_). _Lui_ (= Spanish _él_) is prepositional case (es. _a lui, a él_)., but this is OT.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Scusa, ho fatto confusione col francese. A livello pratico non mi sarebbe mai successo.


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## Angelo di fuoco

It's actually not the "prepositional case" (because it isn't used exclusively with prepositions: "ho visto lui anziché lei"), but the stressed (=strong) form of the pronoun.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Sorry, would you mind explaining OT?  Thanks.





Angelo di fuoco said:


> It's actually not the "prepositional case" (because it isn't used exclusively with prepositions: "ho visto lui anziché lei"), but the stressed (=strong) form of the pronoun.



Yes, I was speaking about that case (_para él poder_). You're right that in Romance languages stressed direct object pronouns have the same form of stressed prepositional pronouns. 

This part of discussion is OT because, as CapnPrep showed, this structure (_para él poder_) is not possible in Italian, so it's no use speaking about Italian pronouns. 

P.S. 

OT = off-topic


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## merquiades

This discussion  in Sólo Español on the differences between _antes de llegar tú / antes de tú llegar / antes de que tú llegaras_ may be of interest here.  It appears that such infinitive structures are very common nowadays and even preferred, especially in Spain.  The only difference with Portuguese is the addition of a verbal ending to the infinitive in such cases:  _antes de tu chegares_.


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## francisgranada

Hulalessar said:


> ... Investigation reveals that Portuguese and Galician are the only European languages which allow the infinitive to be inflected for number and person.


Not the only, the Hungarian has this feature as well. E.g. _menni _- "to go", the conjugated forms are: _mennem, menned, mennie, mennünk, mennetek, menniük._


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## Hulalessar

francisgranada said:


> Not the only, the Hungarian has this feature as well. E.g. _menni _- "to go", the conjugated forms are: _mennem, menned, mennie, mennünk, mennetek, menniük._



My post above should have read:

...Portuguese and Galician are the only _Indo-_European languages which allow the infinitive to be inflected for number and person.


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## Forero

Hulalessar said:


> My post above should have read:
> 
> ...Portuguese and Galician are the only _Indo-_European languages which allow the infinitive to be inflected for number and person.


What of Modern Greek and the slavic languages of the Baltic?

The Modern Greek infinitive looks a lot like an English infinitive, with the particle "na" playing the role of English "to", but the verb is conjungated like a subjunctive. Well maybe it is a subjunctive with "na" as "that"/"que", but it is used even when the subject matches, like a Spanish infinitive.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Slavic languages of the Baltic don't have any form that resemble the personal infinitive.
I'm not familiar with modern Greek, but, from what I know, some languages of the Balkan Sprachbund (Bulgarian, e. g.) have lost the infinitive, and Greek is one of those. The Ancient Greek infinitive usually ended in -ein.


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