In Ancient Greek the infinitive has four tenses (present, future, aorist, perfect) and three voices (active, middle, passive). Unique forms for the middle are found only in the future and aorist; in the present and perfect, middle and passive are the same. Only the Ancient Greek aorist infinitives active and passive survive in Modern Greek, but their descendants have a totally different function. The Ancient Greek ?????? "to write" became ??????? in analogy to the present infinitive ??????? and then ?????? in Modern Greek and is used only in combination with the auxiliary verb ??? "I have" in the formation of the Present Perfect: ??? ?????? "I have written, lit. I have write(inf.)". When combined with ???? "I had", it yields the Past Perfect ???? ?????? "I had written". Similarly, the Ancient Greek ???????? "to be written" survives as ?????? (????? in Katharevousa); thus, ???? ?????? (???? ????? in Kath.) means "It has been written". In Pontic Greek, infinitives have a similar function; they only serve for the creation of the Present Perfect Optative: ?? ???? ????'??? "I wish I have written". Infinitives are formed this way: active: root of the Future + -???; passive: root of the Aorist + -???. Examples: ???????????, ????????, ???'???, ???'???, ?????'???, ????????, ????????. In Modern Greek, "I want to write" translates ???? ?? ????? (literally, "I want that I write"), opposed to Ancient Greek ????? ??????? (literally, "I want to write"). In Modern Greek, the infinitive has changed form and is used mainly in the formation of tenses and not with an article or alone. Instead of the Ancient Greek infinitive "???????", Modern Greek uses the infinitive "??????", which does not inflect. The Modern Greek infinitive has only two forms according to voice, "??????" for the active voice and "????(?)??" for the passive voice. The infinitive in Russian usually ends in -t’ (ть) preceded by a thematic vowel, or -ti (ти), if not preceded by one; some verbs have a stem ending in a consonant and change the t to c’, such as *mogt’ > moc’ (*могть > мочь) "can". Some other Balto-Slavic languages have the infinitive typically ending in, for example, -c (sometimes -c) in Polish, -t’ in Slovak, -t (formerly -ti) in Czech and Latvian (with a handful ending in -s on the latter), -ty (-ти) in Ukrainian, -ць (-ts') in Belarusian. Lithuanian infinitives end in -ti, Slovenian end on -ti or -ci, and Croatian on -ti or -ci. Serbian officially retains infinitives -ti or -ci, but is more flexible than the other Slavs in breaking the infinitive through a clause. The infinitive nevertheless remains the dictionary form. Bulgarian and Macedonian have lost the infinitive altogether (it usually ended in -ти). For that reason, the present first-person singular conjugation is used as the dictionary form in Bulgarian, where as Macedonian uses the third person singular form of the verb in present tense. Hebrew has two infinitives, the infinitive absolute and the infinitive construct. The infinitive construct is used after prepositions and is inflected with pronominal endings to indicate its subject or object: bikhtobh hassopher "when the scribe wrote", ahare lekhto "after his going". When the infinitive construct is preceded by ? (l?-, li-, la-) "to", it has a similar meaning as the English to-infinitive, and this is its most frequent use in Modern Hebrew. The infinitive absolute is used for verb focus, as in ??? ???? moth yamuth (literally "die he will die"; figuratively, "he shall indeed die").[6] This usage is commonplace in the Bible, but in Modern Hebrew it is restricted to high-flown literary works. Note, however, that the to-infinitive of Hebrew is not the dictionary form; that is the third person singular perfect form. The Seri language of northwestern Mexico has infinitival forms which are used in two constructions (with the verb meaning 'want' and with the verb meaning 'be able'). The infinitive is formed by adding a prefix to the stem: either iha- [i?a-] (plus a vowel change of certain vowel-initial stems) if the complement clause is transitive, or ica- [ika-] (and no vowel change) if the complement clause is intransitive. The infinitive shows agreement in number with the controlling subject. Examples are: icatax ihmiimzo 'I want to go', where icatax is the singular infinitive of the verb 'go' (singular root is -atax), and icalx hamiimcajc 'we want to go', where icalx is the plural infinitive. Examples of the transitive infinitive: ihaho 'to see it/him/her/them' (root -aho), and ihacta 'to look at it/him/her/them' (root -oocta).
