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 through
the substantivized infinitive. The study investigates sentences in which dependent taxis relations are
realized. The substantivized infinitive is one of the deverbatives in Romance languages, formed by
adding an article to the infinitive. During substantivation, the infinitive acquires the semantic and
syntactic properties of a noun while not losing its verbal features, including the ability to take
dependents according to the principle typical of a verb, thus being able to form an extended logical noun
together with its dependents. The phenomenon of the substantivized infinitive, as a typical analytical
formation in Romance languages, is analyzed diachronically based on literary texts from different
centuries. The research reveals that in Old French both the simple (present infinitive) and complex (past
infinitive) forms of the substantivized infinitive were actively used to actualize taxis meanings of
simultaneity, 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having been replaced by other means of taxis actualization.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 substantivized
infinitive – both in its simple and complex forms – was present in early works written in literary Italian
and is still used in the modern language, including for expressing taxis relations. Thus, this linguistic
phenomenon has developed unevenly in Romance languages.