The form used as the name of a noun or verb is sometimes known as the noun or verb’s citation form. In some Indo-European languages, the citation form for a verb is its infinitive. In many cases, the infinitive has an inflectional suffix, for example French infinitives generally end in -er, -ir, -re or -oir.
In those languages, the infinitive makes a suitable citation form. It is suitable because the suffix makes it obvious that:
- the word is a verb; and
- the form used is clearly the infinitive.
Many other languages either have verbs that do not inflect or do not have infinitives at all. In some of those languages, the verb conventionally used as the citation from is, for example, the 1st or 3rd person singular of the present tense. Such forms are often less marked than, for example, forms for other persons, for the plural or for other tenses. (Generally it is preferable for the citation form to carry no markings of, for example, person, number or tense.)
Bare and prepositional infinitives
Just like other Germanic languages, English has 2 ways of using infinitives:
- as a bare infinitive (eg have); or
- as a prepositional infinitive preceded by a particle such as to (eg have).The particle used was historically a preposition meaning ‘to’ or ‘at’.
Table 1 shows both types of infinitive in English and 6 other Germanic languages.
| Language | Bare infinitive | Prepositional infinitive | 1st person singular |
| English | have | to have | have |
| German | haben | zu haben | habe |
| Dutch | hebben | te hebben | heb |
| Norwegian | ha | å ha | har |
| Swedish | ha | att ha | har |
| Danish | have | at have | har |
| Icelandic | hafa | að hafa | hef |
For the 6 Germanic languages (other than English) mentioned in table 1, the bare infinitive is clearly distinct from the forms of the present tense because either:
- the bare infinitive is marked with a suffix (-en) and forms of the present tense are marked with a different suffix (generally -e for the 1st person singular, though for German habe that suffix coalesces with the final vowel of the verb) or with no suffix. (German and Dutch)
- all forms of the present tense are marked with the suffix -r, which is not present in the infinitive. (Norwegian, Swedish and Danish)
- the infinitive differs in other ways from the forms of the present tense. (Icelandic)
Citation forms in these languages
Because the infinitive differs from the present tense forms in those 6 languages, it is not surprising that the bare infinitive is used as the citation form for verbs.
The position is different in English. The bare infinitive (eg have) is identical to all forms of the present tense, except the 3rd person singular, which ends in the suffix -s (has).
Perhaps for that reason, it is common practice to use the English infinitive form preceded by to—for example, to have—as the citation form for an English verb. That practice:
- has an advantage—it signals clearly that form used is the infinitive by distinguishing it all forms of the present tense; but
- also has a disadvantage—arguably, the particle to isn’t part of the verb at all. Indeed, there are many circumstances when English uses the infinitive without a preceding to. One of those circumstances is when a modal verb (such as can, will or should) precedes the main verb.
On balance, I think the arguments favour using the bare infinitive as the citation form, except when that form could be confused with a noun. So, my drafting convention on this blog is as follows:
- unless the verb has the same spelling as a noun (eg contract and contract), I use the bare infinitive as the citation form.
- if the verb does have the same spelling as a noun (eg contract and contract), either I insert concise wording to show that I mean the verb not the noun, or I use the prepositional infinitive (eg to contract versus contract).