Nice article. I thought the discussion of case and finite vs non-finite verbs was especially helpful as that is an aspect I have not paid much attention to.
I’m still playing with SuperNotes app and made some notecards about this article.
Nonfinite Verbs (Elliot Article)
- Complete thought in English requires subject/verb/tense.
- When verb is used for complete thought, it’s called a “finite” verb. This is a “normal” verb.
- Verb used for incomplete thought is a “nonfinite” verb. In this role, verbs serve as nouns or modifiers, and can’t perform normal verb role, even though they have some characteristics of verbs.
- “Nonfinite verbs use a word that’s based on a verb to communicate an idea, concept, trait or thing instead of communicating a complete thought about an action that happened or is happening.”
Case & Nonfinite Verbs
English has three main cases which are primarily used with pronouns. For example, “I” is the case indicating a subject, “me” indicates an object, and “my” indicates possessive. I/me/my are different forms of the same word which indicate different cases. When we aren’t using pronouns, the subject and object case are the same, e.g. “John” or “ball” can be a subject or object. The possessive case (“John’s” or “ball’s”) is different though.
Finite verbs use subject case for their subject and object case for their object. E.g. “He saw him.” shows different cases of the same word for the subject (“he”) and object (“him”).
Nonfinite verbs don’t specify case. They use object case for both subjects and objects. For example, consider “I regretted him leaving the company.” or “Him leaving the company was really hard for us.”. In both examples, the subject of the gerund “leaving” is “him” not “he”, even though “he” is the subject form of the word. Similarly, in “I wanted him to sing”, the subject of the infinitive “to sing” is “him” not “he”. Note, in the first example, “leaving” is the object of “regretted”. In the second example, “leaving” is the subject of “was” and “to sing” is the object of “wanted”. “Leaving” and “to sing” both play a noun role. The finite verbs are “regretted” and “was”.
Mood
a category or form which indicates whether a verb expresses fact (indicative mood), command (imperative mood), question (interrogative mood), wish (optative mood), or conditionality (subjunctive mood)
Incompleteness of Finite Verbs
Things finite verbs can be missing:
- Subject
- Tense
- Object
- Mood
- Case
Types of Nonfinite Verbs
| Tense | Form | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gerunds | None | End in “ing” | Noun |
| Participles | Past and present | Normally end in “ing” (present) or “ed” (past) | Modifier |
| Infinitives | None | start with “to” and use base form of verb (e.g. “to clean”) | Noun or modifier |
Finite versus Nonfinite Verbs (Examples)
- Finite verbs tell us some action happened and who or what is acting.
- Nonfinite verbs refer to actions without them actually happening in the sentence.
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- E.g. In “I want to leave”, nonfinite “to leave” discusses an action (leaving) without the action being performed by anyone. The action being performed in the sentence is “want”.
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- E.g. In “I saw running water”, “running” describes a characteristic of the water rather than the action (which in this sentence, is “saw”).
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- E.g. In “Running is fun”, “running” is a noun representing the concept of running, and the link between running and “fun” (the “is”) is the finite verb.
Building Up a Sentence
- Simple sentences can be thought of as starting with a verb and then adding more details until you have a complete thought.
- Nonfinite verbs are incomplete by their nature, so you can’t form sentences around them.
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- Compete things are finite and don’t leave details left unspecified.
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- Complete things are independent, but nonfinite verbs serving as nouns (which are governed by a verb) or modifiers (which modify other words).