THE SUBSTANTIVATED INFINITIVE AS A MEANS OF ACTUALIZING DEPENDENT TAXIS IN ROMANCE LANGUAGES (ON THE EXAMPLE OF FRENCH AND ITALIAN LANGUAGES)

Abstract

This paper examines the actualization of taxis meanings in French and Italian throughthe substantivized infinitive. The study investigates sentences in which dependent taxis relations arerealized. The substantivized infinitive is one of the deverbatives in Romance languages, formed byadding an article to the infinitive. During substantivation, the infinitive acquires the semantic andsyntactic properties of a noun while not losing its verbal features, including the ability to takedependents according to the principle typical of a verb, thus being able to form an extended logical nountogether with its dependents. The phenomenon of the substantivized infinitive, as a typical analyticalformation in Romance languages, is analyzed diachronically based on literary texts from differentcenturies. The research reveals that in Old French both the simple (present infinitive) and complex (pastinfinitive) forms of the substantivized infinitive were actively used to actualize taxis meanings ofsimultaneity, anteriority, and posteriority, whereas in Modern French this form has fallen out of use,having been replaced by other means of taxis actualization. In contrast, in Italian the substantivizedinfinitive – both in its simple and complex forms – was present in early works written in literary Italianand is still used in the modern language, including for expressing taxis relations. Thus, this linguisticphenomenon has developed unevenly in Romance languages.