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I heard my teacher stating that the base form of a verb is not an infinitive itself, but it is used to construct one of the two forms of infinitives.

Edit note

This question has been linked to a previous one of mine. However, in that question I was asking about the difference between infinitives and bare infinitives. This is a different question altogether.

Araucaria - Him
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Stim Roe
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    go: base form of the verb go. I go: conjugated form of the verb go (same in spelling and pronunciation as the base form). Let me go: the bare infinitive of the verb go. I want to go: the to-infinitive of the verb go. So while I go has the same spelling and pronuciation as the infinitive, it's not the infinitive. But all of these are examples of the base form of the verb go. – Peter Shor Oct 18 '23 at 16:51
  • This appears to be a comment on the answer to your original question. – livresque Oct 18 '23 at 21:08
  • The lexical base is identical with the plain form that is used to construct infinitival clauses, subjunctives and imperatives. – BillJ Oct 19 '23 at 07:03
  • There is no difference, what is different is usage or grammar. – Lambie Oct 19 '23 at 14:49
  • Different people use different terms, and often there is no difference. In English, there is no difference between "infinitive" and "base form" -- they're both verb forms -- but "bare infinitive" is syntactic ("bare" because no complementizer to) and the others are morphological. I'm getting tired of answering this question. Terminology differs and there is often no difference between terms besides author's preference. – John Lawler Oct 19 '23 at 15:15
  • @JohnLawler But English has no infinitive form, so we can hardly say there is no difference between 'infinitive' and 'base form'. As it happens, the lexical base is identical with the 'plain form' that is used to construct infinitival clauses, subjunctives and imperatives. – BillJ Oct 19 '23 at 17:42
  • The infinitive form has merged with the present form. Just as the past and the past participle forms have merged in all regular verbs and many irregulars. Languages change, and definitions are always inadequate to describe data. You can call them anything you want, but you can't go from terminology to "therefore" or "hardly". – John Lawler Oct 19 '23 at 17:54
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    @JohnLawler You keep talking of the 'infinitive form’, but, as I claimed in a previous thread, English does not have an infinitive form of the verb. Take the verb "walk", for example: the plain present and the plain form have the same shape, "walk", but they are different inflectional forms of the verb. Similarly for the preterite and past participle; they share the same shape "walked", but they are different inflectional forms. – BillJ Oct 20 '23 at 07:44
  • @BillJ You may claim all you want, but that's just the way you want to talk about it, not a universal principle. You talk the way you want, I'll talk the way I want; even though someone may be wrong on the internet, I can live with that. – John Lawler Oct 20 '23 at 17:37
  • @JohnLawler But it's a fact that English does not have an infinitive form of the verb in the way that, say, French does. It would be flat wrong or at least misleading to say that it does. Which explains why the term 'split infinitive' is misleading: there's nothing to 'split'! I don't see the relevance of the Internet. – BillJ Oct 21 '23 at 07:09
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    What do you want to call the verb form be? It's the only distinctive infinitive form left in English, but it's awfly common, and always called an infinitive in grammars and textbooks. I used the phrase "infinitive form" because it's a common in such venues, which is where our readers are from. I don't care what you call it; I think the fetish for naming tenses, constructions, and parts of speech is silly. Things always change, and you can't have a name for everything. And even if you did, what good does it do? It's just another insect on a pin. – John Lawler Oct 21 '23 at 16:14

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The base form or plain form of the verb occurs in four different constructions. The imperative, the subjunctive, the bare infinitival construction and the to-infinitival construction. For many linguists, the to-infinitival construction is actually a case of a non-finite auxiliary verb, to, taking a bare infinitival complement. You won't find that analysis in any school or undergraduate curriculum however. So, for our purposes, here are examples of the four constructions where we might see the base/plain form of the verb:

  1. Be quiet! (imperative)
  2. I demand that you be quiet! (subjunctive)
  3. You should be quiet. (bare infinitive)
  4. I want you to be quiet. (to-infinitive)

Each of these uses the base/plain form of the verb, but they are not all bare infinitives!

Araucaria - Him
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In comments John Lawler wrote:

Different people use different terms, and often there is no difference. In English, there is no difference between "infinitive" and "base form" -- they're both verb forms -- but "bare infinitive" is syntactic ("bare" because no complementizer to) and the others are morphological. I'm getting tired of answering this question. Terminology differs and there is often no difference between terms besides author's preference.

The infinitive form has merged with the present form. Just as the past and the past participle forms have merged in all regular verbs and many irregulars. Languages change, and definitions are always inadequate to describe data. You can call them anything you want, but you can't go from terminology to "therefore" or "hardly".

tchrist
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In comments BillJ wrote:

The lexical base is identical with the plain form that is used to construct infinitival clauses, subjunctives and imperatives.

@JohnLawler But English has no infinitive form, so we can hardly say there is no difference between 'infinitive' and 'base form'. As it happens, the lexical base is identical with the 'plain form' that is used to construct infinitival clauses, subjunctives and imperatives.

tchrist
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Can you tell me the difference between the bare infinitive and the base form of a verb?

The term "bare infinitive" is a grammatical category.

"I can jump the fence"

"The base, or root, form" is a linguistic term and teaching aid that demonstrates the root from which the verb arose and which can often be used to conjugate the verb.

The verb "to jump" is conjugated from its base form "jump-" I jump; he jumps; jumped, have jumped.

twinkl.co.uk/teaching-wiki

What is the base form verb (or the root form)? A base form is the simplest form of a verb, without any subject pronouns like ‘I’ or ‘we’ attached. You’ll often hear it referred to as the infinitive or root form of a verb - it’s what we change when we want to make it agree with different tenses and subject pronouns. When you search for a verb in a dictionary or thesaurus, this is the form you’ll find.

Though they’re functionally identical (except for the 3rd person singular), the base form is different from the present form of a verb in that it doesn’t appear with a subject pronoun. This is the difference between ‘I write’ and ‘write’.

Greybeard
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In a comment Peter Shor wrote:

go: base form of the verb go. I go: conjugated form of the verb go (same in spelling and pronunciation as the base form). Let me go: the bare infinitive of the verb go. I want to go: the to-infinitive of the verb go. So while I go has the same spelling and pronuciation as the infinitive, it's not the infinitive. But all of these are examples of the base form of the verb go.

tchrist
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