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A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in which an adverb or adverbial phrase separates the "to" and "infinitive" constituents of what was traditionally called the "full infinitive", but is more commonly known in modern linguistics as the to-infinitive (e.g., to go).
Originally a preterite; see English modal verbs: need (needs/need) – needed – needed: Weak: Regular except in the use of need in place of needs in some contexts, by analogy with can, must, etc; [4] see English modal verbs: ought – (no other forms) Defective: Originally a preterite; see English modal verbs: pay – paid – paid overpay ...
In linguistic typology, active–stative alignment (also split intransitive alignment or semantic alignment) is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the sole argument ("subject") of an intransitive clause (often symbolized as S) is sometimes marked in the same way as an agent of a transitive verb (that is, like a subject such as "I" or "she" in English) but other times in the same way ...
Tmesis of prefixed verbs (whereby the prefix is separated from the simple verb) was thought to be an original feature of the Ancient Greek language, common in Homer (and later poetry), but not used in Attic prose. [citation needed] Such separable verbs are also part of the normal grammatical usage of some modern languages, such as Dutch and German.
An example of split ergativity conditioned by the grammatical aspect is found in Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); in the perfective aspect of transitive verbs (in active voice), the subject takes ergative case and the direct object takes an unmarked absolutive case identical to the nominative case, which is sometimes called direct case.
The English language has many irregular verbs, approaching 200 in normal use – and significantly more if prefixed forms are counted. In most cases, the irregularity concerns the past tense (also called preterite) or the past participle.
English verbs distinguish singular from plural number in the third person present tense ("He goes" versus "They go"). Old English also contained dual grammatical numbers; Modern English retains a few residual terms reflective of dual number (such as both and neither , as opposed to all and none respectively), but they are generally considered ...
The few verbs with stems ending in -a have infinitives in -n (gaan — to go, slaan — to hit). Afrikaans has lost the distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of the verbs "wees" (to be), which admits the present form "is", and the verb "hê" (to have), whose present form is "het".