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| сделав | having done, having made | |||||
2. The infinitive. The infinitive does not indicate person or tense — it describes the action. The infinitive is translated as 'to X'; the imperfective infinitive делать is translated as 'to do,' as is the perfective infinitive сделать. The infinitive of a verb consists of the infinitive stem plus the infinitival ending. In Russian, there are three infinitive types: those ending in -ть, those ending in -ти,, and those ending in -чь. The ending -ть is the most common and includes such verbs as делать (to do), сделать (to do), сесть (to sit), говорить (to speak), and заниматься (to study). 4 The ending - ти is found in some infinitives, such as: идти (to go), расти (to grow), and найти (to find). The third ending, -чь, occurs in the following verbs: жечь (to burn), течь (to flow), and мочь (to be able to).
It is the infinitive of the verb which is listed in the dictionary. Therefore, it is important for the reader of Russian to convert to the infinitive before looking in the dictionary. While it would be impossible here to give a formal and complete description of the relation between the infinitive types and all the conjugations, without a lengthy linguistic explanation, the following generalizations should be helpful. The reader should remove the conjugated ending (i.e., the present and future tense endings, which are collectively called nonpast endings, and the past tense ending) to find a stem. If working with a past tense, whose stem is equivalent to the infinitive stem, the infinitive is easily determined by dropping the past tense suffix and adding the infinitive ending. Generally, if the stem ends in a vowel, the -ть suffix will apply (дела/ют, дела/ть).
However, when working from a verb with two different stems, one in the infinitive and one in the nonpast, sometimes a regular consonant mutation is present: писать, пишу, пишешь, etc. The infinitive-past tense stem is писа-, and the present tense stem is пиш-. This is a regular alternation. The following is a list of common consonant alternations:
| щ from ск, ст | ш from с, к |
| ж from з, г, д | ч from к, т |
| жд from д | мл, пл, вл, бл, фл from м, п, в, б, ф |
If the stem ends in a -ч, -к, -г, and the verb is first conjugation, the -чь suffix will apply (мог/ут, мо/чь; тек/ут, течь). 5 These verbs exhibit stem consonant alternations; к alternates with ч, г with ж, with the first-person singular and the third-person plural being the same: течь (to flow), теку, течёшь, течёт, течём, течёте, текут. The past tense of these verbs lacks the suffix -л- in the masculine form: тёк, текла, текло, текли.
If the stem ends in some other consonant and the verb is first conjugation, the -ти suffix applies (ид/ут, ид/ти; раст/ут, рас/ти). A warning is necessary here, however; these generalizations are not comprehensive linguistic rules, nor are they without exception. The reader should therefore keep in mind the list of consonant alternations; these often occur and subsequently mask the relation between the infinitive and its conjugated forms.
When an alternation occurs in a first-conjugation verb, except those in -чь, the alternation occurs in all the persons, while in second-conjugation verbs, the alternation occurs only in the first- person singular; the remaining forms retain the consonant of the infinitive.
Also, in the Appendix are several sample paradigms which will assist the reader in determining infinitives.
