Infinitival Clauses and Their Hidden Subjects

A Hebrew infinitive carries no person, no number and no gender. It therefore names nobody — and yet every infinitive in a real sentence has someone performing it. That someone is fixed entirely by the matrix verb, with no marking anywhere in the sentence to tell you so. Which verbs take an infinitive at all is on verbs that take an infinitive and after modals. This page is the harder question: who is doing it.

The test

Two steps, and they answer almost every case.

1. Ask who performs the infinitive.
2. Check whether that person appears anywhere in the main clause, and in what shape — as the subject, as a ל־ or מ־ phrase, as an את object, or not at all.

The three answers correspond to three systems: subject control, object control, and the impersonal frames where the performer is simply anyone.

Subject control

The commonest case: the infinitive is performed by the subject of the matrix verb. רצה, החליט, ניסה, הסכים, סירב, הצליח, התכוון and הבטיח all work this way.

הבטיח is the interesting one, because it can name a second person and still keep control on the subject. Put these two side by side — one word apart, and the worker changes hands:

Nothing in the syntax distinguishes them. Both have a subject, a ל־ person and an infinitive in the same order; the difference lives in the lexical entry of הבטיח versus אמר, and you have to know it verb by verb.

Object control

Here the matrix verb names the performer itself, in a ל־, מ־ or את phrase, and the infinitive is handed to that person.

Which preposition — checked, not guessed

No grammar consulted for this guide supplies this inventory, so every row below was measured against he.wikipedia with one probe shape — insource:/VERB PRONOUN ל[א-ת]/, regex form, 17 August 2026 — and the rival government, where there was one to test, was measured with the same shape, so the two columns are comparable. Figures above a thousand are floors. A verb that could not be confirmed is not in the table.

The impersonal frames

מותר, אסור, אפשר, אי אפשר, כדאי, צריך, חבל, קשה and their neighbours are not verbs with subjects at all. The performer is either anyone or the person named in a ל־ phrase. These live on impersonal predicates; what matters here is that they answer the test with nobody in particular.

When nothing licenses an infinitive

Run the test on English I expected them to ring and the answer is them — but ציפה has no ל־ slot, no מ־ slot and no את slot to put them into. When the performer is not the subject and the verb offers no place to name them, the infinitive is simply unavailable, and Hebrew switches to ש plus a finite verb.

That is the whole content of the English want him to come problem, generalised: the English object-plus-infinitive pattern has no Hebrew counterpart, and the verb's own government is what decides whether you get an infinitive or a ש-clause.

After prepositions

A handful of prepositions take an infinitive directly, and the performer is borrowed from the main clause — במקום ל־, מבלי ל־, בלי ל־, כדי ל־.

And when the two subjects differ, the same preposition takes ש and a finite clause instead — exactly the switch described above:

לפני and אחרי are not in this group: they take a noun or a ש-clause, never an infinitive, and that is worked out on temporal clauses.

The literary suffixed infinitive

Biblical Hebrew had a way of giving the infinitive its subject outright: ב or כ, plus the infinitive construct, plus a possessive suffix. It survives as a literary register — insource:/בבואו/ 476, insource:/בצאתו/ 272, insource:/בלכתו/ 55, all floors (regex form, 17 August 2026) — and you should read it, not write it.

Its morphology and full paradigm are on the suffixed infinitive. Note what it solves: it is the one Hebrew construction where an infinitive carries its own subject, which is precisely what the modern language cannot do.

Five to identify

Common Mistakes

1. עזר with את. Every instinct says help someone takes an object, and Hebrew helps to a person. The corpus is unambiguous: עזר לו ל־ 470, עזר אותו ל־ 0.

2. ביקש with ל־. The mirror error, and it comes from the ל־ column being so much bigger — אמר ל, הורה ל, הציע ל, הרשה ל, and then ביקש breaks the pattern with מ־.

3. Giving an impersonal predicate a subject. English I am not allowed to smoke has a subject, and the learner supplies one. אסור is not a verb and has nobody to agree with; the person goes into a ל־ phrase or nowhere.

4. An object plus infinitive on a verb with no person slot. Run the test before you build the sentence: if the verb offers no ל־, no מ־ and no את for the performer, the infinitive is not available at any price.

Key Takeaways

• A Hebrew infinitive names nobody. Ask who performs it, then look for that person in the main clause — as subject, as a ל־ or מ־ or את phrase, or nowhere at all.
• Subject control: רצה, החליט, ניסה, הסכים, סירב, התכוון — and הבטיח, which keeps control on the subject even with a ל־ person present. הוא הבטיח לי לסדר means he sorts it; הוא אמר לי לסדר means I do.
• Object control: the performer is named by the verb. ביקש takes מ־ (852 : 2 against the accusative) while its neighbours אמר, הורה, הציע, הרשה, נתן, גרם, עזר take ל־, and שכנע and אילץ take את.
• Impersonal frames — אסור, מותר, כדאי, אפשר, צריך — have no subject: the performer is anyone, or the ל־ person.
• When the performer differs from the subject and the verb has no slot to name them, the infinitive is unavailable and Hebrew switches to ש + finite verb: ציפיתי שהם יתקשרו.
• Prepositions that take an infinitive — במקום, מבלי, בלי, כדי — borrow the main subject, and take ש + clause when the subjects differ: מבלי לומר מילה against מבלי שאיש שם לב.
• The literary suffixed infinitive (בבואו, בצאתו) is the one construction that carries its own subject, in a possessive suffix. Read it; do not write it.