Just when we thought we had verbs figured out, we’re brought face-to-face with a new animal: non-finite verbs. These words look similar to verbs we’ve already been talking about, but they act quite different from those other verbs.
By definition, a non-finite verb cannot serve as the main verb in an independent clause. In practical terms, this means that they don’t serve as the action of a sentence. They also don’t have a tense. While the sentence around them may be past, present, or future tense, the non-finite verbs themselves are neutral. There are three types of non-finite verbs: gerunds, participles, and infinitives.
Gerunds
Gerunds all end in -ing: skiing, reading, dancing, singing, etc. Gerunds act like nouns and can serve as subjects or objects of sentences. They can be created using active or helping verbs:
I like swimming.
Being loved can make someone feel safe.
Do you fancy going out?
Having read the book once before makes me more prepared.
Often the “doer” of the gerund is clearly signaled:
We enjoyed singing yesterday (we ourselves sang)
Tomás likes eating apricots (Tomás himself eats apricots)
However, sometimes the “doer” must be overtly specified, typically in a position immediately before the non-finite verb:
We enjoyed their singing.
We were delighted at Bianca being awarded the prize.
PRACTICE
Identify the gerunds and their roles in the following sentences:
Sam was really bad at gardening.
Studying is one of Jazz’s favorite things to do.
Show Answer
Participles
A participle is a form of a verb that is used in a sentence to modify a noun, noun phrase, verb, or verb phrase, and then plays a role similar to an adjective or adverb. It is one of the types of nonfinite verb forms.
The two types of participle in English are traditionally called the present participle (forms such as writing, singing and raising) and the past participle (forms such as written, sung and raised).
The Present Participle
Even though they look exactly the same, gerunds and present participles do different things. As we just learned, the gerund acts as a noun: e.g., “I like sleeping“; “Sleeping is not allowed.” Present participles, on the other hand, act similarly to an adjective or adverb: e.g., “The sleeping girl over there is my sister”; “Breathing heavily, she finished the race in first place.”
The present participle, or participial phrases (clauses) formed from it, are used as follows:
as an adjective phrase modifying a noun phrase: The man sitting over there is my uncle.
adverbially, the subject being understood to be the same as that of the main clause: Looking at the plans, I gradually came to see where the problem lay. He shot the man, killing him.
more generally as a clause or sentence modifier: Broadly speaking, the project was successful.
The present participle can also be used with the helping verb to be to form a type of present tense: Marta was sleeping. (We’ll discuss this further in Text: Complex Verb Tenses.) This is something we learned a little bit about in helping verbs and tense.
The Past Participle
Past participles often look very similar to the simple past tense of a verb: finished, danced, etc. However, some verbs have different forms. Reference lists will be your best help in finding the correct past participle. Here is one such list of participles. Here’s a short list of some of the most common irregular past participles you’ll use:
VerbSimple PastPast Participle
to bewas/werebeen
to becomebecamebecome
to dodiddone
to gowentgone
to knowknewknow
to seesawseen
to speakspokespoken
to taketooktaken
to writewrotewritten
Past participles are used in a couple of different ways:
as an adjective phrase: The chicken eaten by the children was contaminated.
adverbially: Seen from this perspective, the problem presents no easy solution.
in a nominative absolute construction, with a subject: The task finished, we returned home.
The past participle can also be used with the helping verb to have to form a type of past tense (which we’ll talk about in Text: Complex Verb Tenses): The chicken has eaten. It is also used to form the passive voice: Tianna was voted as most likely to succeed. When the passive voice is used following a relative pronoun (like that or which) we sometimes leave out parts of the phrase:
He had three things that were taken away from him
He had three things taken away from him
In the second sentence, we removed the words that were. However, we still use the past participle taken. The removal of these words is called elision. Elision is used with a lot of different constructions in English; we use it shorten sentences when things are understood. However, we can only use elision in certain situations, so be careful when removing words! (We’ll discuss this further in Text: Using the Passive Voice.)
Explanation:
