LA VALEUR DE L’INFINITIF DANS LE SYSTÈME VERBAL DE L’ANGLAIS ET DU FRANÇAIS : QUESTIONS SOULEVÉES PAR UNE ÉTUDE CONTRASTIVE
THE MEANING OF THE INFINITIVE IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH: QUESTIONS RAISED BY A CONTRASTIVE STUDY

Summary/Abstract: The Meaning of the Infinitive in English and French: Questions Raised by a Contrastive Study. Psychomechanics offers essentially the same definition of the meaning of the verb form called “infinitive” in the verb system of both English and French, that of evoking a completely virtual event corresponding to a systematic position of the verb situated entirely on the non-realized side of the dividing-line separating non-realized events from realized ones. This contrastive study of English and French demonstrates that neither the French nor the English infinitive corresponds to a prior position in relation to the event that they denote. Moreover, it is shown that the term “infinitive” does not mean the same thing in French and English, which leads to the formulation of a cautionary warning regarding taking abstract grammatical terminology as indicative of the semantic content of the forms to which it is applied.

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