Verb – κεῖμαι, κάθημαι

The verb θέλω can also take a noun as a complement, as in θέλω τὸν ἄρτον ‘I desire the bread,’ suggesting that the infinitive clause and the noun occupy the same syntactic slot. Another commonality between infinitives and nouns is their use in nonverbal predicates:

In this sentence, the infinitive clause is the subject of the sentence, since it is equivalent to saying ‘To take the bread of the children is not good’ where the property of being not good is attributed to the action of taking the bread of the children. Of course, we could also have a noun as the subject instead of an infinitive, such as in the sentence ‘The bread is not good.’ At other times, an infinitive clause can serve as a subject of a finite verb:

The finite verb in this clause is ‘defile,’ and its subject is the infinitive clause ‘to eat with unwashed hands.’

In all these examples, the infinitive clause allows us to attribute certain properties to eventualities. We can call eventualities good or not good. We can say that they have certain effects in the world, such as defiling someone. Engaging in an eventuality can be desired or not desired. We can attribute the same kinds of properties to things in the world which we refer to with nouns. Both syntactically and conceptually, then, eventualities referred to by infinitive clauses are very similar to things referred to by nouns.