Talk:Nonfinite verb

message: *Oppose - If anything, Non-finite verb should be merged with verb, not verbal.  However, due to the extensive "Verb types" category, I'd say we're better off leaving these individual verb pages in place, and expanding them where possible. --W0lfie 15:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-finite verb merge 

message: *The definitions for finite and non-finite verbs are inadequate (unsurprisingly, because there probably are no adequate definitions):
*#There are non-finite verbs that inflect for gender, number, person, tense, and aspect (and plenty of finite verbs that show no inflection).
*#There are non-finite verbs that combine with a subject.
*#A non-finite verb can head an independent clause (just not a finite clause).
*The inventory "participles" – "gerunds" – "infinitives" confuses form and function ("gerund" is one special function of a particular participial form). English (I believe) has three non-finite verb forms: present and past/passive participles, base form (infinitive/imperative). This should probably be the top-level structure.
CapnPrep 20:09, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems like the very phrase "non-finite verb forms" confuses form and function; for example, an English verb's base form has both finite functions (e.g., as an imperative) and non-finite functions (e.g., in infinitival clauses). If we distinguish types that differ either in form or in function, I guess English has five non-finite verb types: gerunds, past/passive/perfect participles, present/active/imperfect participles, infinitives/bare infinitives, and infinitives/supines/to-infinitives/full infintivies. Ruakh 20:28, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Points for discussion 

message: Should verbal noun be merged with this article? FilipeS 17:18, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Verbal noun

message: I deleted 'is not limited by a subject' as there is no such technical linguistic term as 'to be limited by the subject' and because finitness is about person-number and/or tense inflections and types of clauses where it occurs (dependent vs. independent clauses). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Newydd (talk • contribs) 18:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment 

message: Need examples: "By some accounts, a non-finite verb acts simultaneously as a verb and as another part of speech; it can take adverbs and certain kinds of verb arguments, producing a verbal phrase (i.e., non-finite clause), and this phrase then plays a different role — usually noun, adjective, or adverb — in a greater clause. This is the reason for the term verbal; non-finite verbs have traditionally been classified as verbal nouns, verbal adjectives, or verbal adverbs."--Treekids (talk) 21:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  These need examples 

message: Nonfinite verb: The word is "nonfinite" without a hyphen because "non" only takes a hyphen before a proper noun or a proper adjective. For example:
non-British, non-Catholic, non-Communist, non-English, non-French, non-Greek, non-Jewish, non-Protestant, and non-Scottish.
Also, all of these words are used in advanced mathematics: nonabelian, noncontinuous, nonempty, nonfinite, noninfinite, nonnegative, nonpositive, nonrational, nonscientific, and nonzero.98.67.166.26 (talk) 15:29, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonfinite verbs 

message: "Most nonfinite verbs found in English are infinitives, participles and gerunds".  This immediately raises the question: if that's most of the nonfinite verbs, what are the others?  And reading further down, it seems to say that English has four types of nonfinite verbs: infinitives, participles, gerunds, and (nonfinite) auxiliary verbs.  This last one seems absurd, because all the examples given of nonfinite auxiliaries are equally examples of infinitives.  For example, the auxiliary "have" is a bare infinitive in phrases like "I will have gone" or "I may have seen it".  It no more deserves a category of its own than "see" in "I may see it".  So we not simply say "Nonfinite verbs found in English are infinitives, participles and gerunds" (or even "Nonfinite verbs in English are infinitives and participles" - since the gerund is no longer recognised as a distinctive entity by English grammarians). 21:02, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Some good points. I'll eventually get around to properly editing the material accordingly. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 03:21, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Auxiliaries 

message: This article should be renamed Nonfinite verb form to include (1) infinitives as a noninflected verb form and (2) participles, gerunds, converbs, gerundives and supines as inflected derivative forms of a verb that aren't verbs themselves. Saying "In English, nonfinite verbs include infinitives, participles and gerunds" is equivocal and contradicts this article's very next sentence, "Nonfinite verb forms in some other languages include converbs, gerundives and supines." Kent Dominic·(talk) 15:25, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  A matter of taxonomy