A nonfinite verb is a verb that is not finite. Nonfinite verbs cannot perform action as the root of an independent clause. Most nonfinite verbs found in English are infinitives, participles and gerunds. Additional nonfinite forms found in some other languages include converbs, gerundives and supines. Nonfinite verbs typically are not inflected by grammatical tense, and they have little inflection for other grammatical categories. Formally, they lack the three grammatical features that are "associated, independently or relatively, with...the act of predication." Generally, they also lack a subject dependent. One or more nonfinite verbs may be associated with a finite verb in a finite clause: the elements of a verb catena, or verb chain. Because English lacks most inflectional morphology, the finite and the nonfinite forms of a verb may appear the same in a given context.
Examples
The following sentences each contain one finite verb and multiple nonfinite verbs : In the above sentences, been, examined and done are past participles, want, have, refuse, accept and get are infinitives, and coming, running and trying are present participles. In languages like English that have little inflectional morphology, certain finite and nonfinite forms of a given verb are often identical, e.g. Despite the fact that the verbs in bold have the same outward appearance, the first in each pair is finite and the second is nonfinite. To distinguish the finite and nonfinite uses, one has to consider the environments in which they appear. Finite verbs in English usually appear as the leftmost verb in a verb catena. For details of verb inflection in English, see English verbs.
Categories
English
English has three kinds of nonfinite verbs: Each of the nonfinite forms appears in a variety of environments.
Infinitives
The infinitive of a verb is considered the "base" form, listed in dictionaries. English infinitives appear in verb catenae if they are introduced by an auxiliary verb or by a certain limited class of main verbs. They are also often introduced by a main verb followed by the particle to. Further, infinitives introduced by to can function as noun phrases or even as modifiers of nouns. The following table illustrates such environments:
Participles
English participles can be divided along two lines: according to aspect and voice. The following table illustrates the distinctions: Participles appear in a variety of environments. They can appear in periphrastic verb catenae, when they help form the main predicate of a clause, as is illustrated with the trees below. Also, they can appear essentially as an adjective modifying a noun. The form of a given perfect or passive participle is strongly influenced by the status of the verb at hand. The perfect and the passive participles of strong verbs in Germanic languages are irregular and must be learned for each verb. The perfect and passive participles of weak verbs, in contrast, are regular and are formed with the suffix -ed.
Gerunds
A gerund is a verb form that appears in positions that are usually reserved for nouns. In English, a gerund has the same form as a progressive active participle and so ends in -ing. Gerunds typically appear as subject or object noun phrases or even as the object of a preposition: Often, distinguishing between a gerund and a progressive active participle is not easy in English, and there is no clear boundary between the two nonfinite verb forms.
The nonfinite verb forms in Modern Greek are identical to the third person of the dependent and it is also called the aorist infinitive. It is used with the auxiliary verb έχω to form the perfect, the pluperfect and the future perfect tenses.
Theories of syntax
For an overview of dependency grammar structure in modern linguistic analysis, three example sentences are shown. The first sentence, The proposal has been intensively examined, is described as follows. The three verbs together form a chain, or verb catena, which functions as the predicate of the sentence. The finite verb has is inflected for person and number, tense, and mood: third person singular, present tense, indicative. The nonfinite verbs been and examined are, except for tense, neutral across such categories and are not inflected otherwise. The subject, proposal, is a dependent of the finite verb has, which is the root in the verb catena. The nonfinite verbs lack a subject dependent. The second sentence shows the following dependency structure: The verb catena contains four verbs and the particle to, which introduces the infinitive have. Again, the one finite verb, did, is the root of the entire verb catena and the subject, they, is a dependent of the finite verb. The third sentence has the following dependency structure: Here the verb catena contains three main verbs so there are three separate predicates in the verb catena. The three examples show distinctions between finite and nonfinite verbs and the roles of these distinctions in sentence structure. For example, nonfinite verbs can be auxiliary verbs or main verbs and they appear as infinitives, participles, gerunds etc.
