English Infinitives

[Irine Melikishvili]

--- TRUDGILL Peter <peter.trudgill at UNIFR.CH> wrote:

> The traditional dialects of some areas of
> southwestern England have, or used to have, special
> morphological marking on infinitives such that
> infinitives of transitive verbs consisted of the
> bare root, while infinitives of intransitive verbs
> (and objectless transitives) took the ending -y :
> 
> "I can't milk the cows today, can you milky?".
> 
> (There appear to be no phonological factors involved
> here.) Of languages which can be said to have
> infintives, do we know of many others which have
> this kind of transitive/intransitive distinction?
> 
> Peter Trudgill
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com