On Non-Finite Verbs pt 1: Introduction

Non-finite verbs are a somewhat under-described thing in conlangs in general. Oftentimes, a conlang will "have" an infinitive, but the author will not describe it in any detail, leaving us to assume its usage is similar to the English infinitive. Infinitives are of course not the only type of non-finite verb either.

Even within Europe, there's differences in how non-finite verbs work. Let's begin by consider a short list of terms.

• Infinitives
• Gerunds
• Supines
• Converbs
  
• Participles
• Other 

A line-up of the usual suspects (and some new acquaintances?)

Nota bene: the terminology for non-finite verb forms is very tradition-dependant. A term can be used in different languages in very different ways. Thus, we cannot derive any typological observations from the names here. I'll, however, ... yeah, ignore that a bit.

Non-finite verbs

 Non-finite verbs are verbs that (usually) cannot be the predicate of a clause. They often are morphologically somewhat 'deficient', lacking some category that finite verbs mark; however, they may also mark morphological categories that make little sense on finite verbs.

Infinitive 

The "basic" infinitive is often - but not always - the dictionary form, c.f. Latin where the present first person singular is the dictionary form. In many European languages, its most typical use is that of being a subordinate verb to an auxiliary:

I will go.
You can always hope.
He wants to learn to play the piano.

Here, we can see a few interesting things: in English, some auxiliaries require a particle before the infinitive. Also, infinitives can be subordinate to infinitives.

Infinitives are not necessarily "uninflected". In German, Swedish, Russian, Finnish and many other languages, the basic infinitive in fact has some morphological marker on it:

essen, äta, est', syödä

Further into this series, we'll look at what uses the 'basic' infinitive is put to in different languages, and we'll find that even this "basic component" varies in many ways from language to language.

Participles

Participles are forms that express something along the lines of a relative subclause: 

a singing man <> a man who sings
a destroyed house <> a house that has been destroyed

 This hides within its scope a lot of space for variation as well. Usually, participles are 'adjective-like verbs' in some sense. Germanic languages conflate voice and TAM a bit for these, whereas other languages may keep these more distinct.

Gerunds

A gerund is often something of a 'nominalization' of a verb; "the act of ...". In English, this is largely conflated with the present participle, but in some languages it's a distinct form, and even in English, regular infinitives sometimes operate a bit like gerunds.

 

Sleeping is important.
I like playing the bass.

 

Unlike nouns, they can take arguments along the lines of subjects and objects, but they may operate under other restrictions and rules for case assignment (or similar) than a finite verb.

 

Latin has a form called the gerundive;  this is a 'modally specific' participle in some sense: viz. "that which needs to be destroyed/repaired/...".

 

The Latin gerund is not quite the same as the 'gerund' in general, but will be dealt with in greater detail later.

Verb nouns 

Some sources distinguish these from gerunds, but this is a confused mess. Just generally perhaps 'the less canonically verb-like and more canonically noun-like the form is, the more justified this term is'?

Deverbal nouns

Deverbal nouns are perhaps the furthest removed from verbs, often breaking argument structure, taking adjectives instead of adverbs, etc. 

Masdar

This term is used in Arabic linguistics and in some traditions influenced by it, and is about as messy as the latin-based terminology.  

Supine

In Latin, the supine is a non-finite form that has a specific selection of cases; it often is used for the subordinate verb when something is done in order to do something else. In Swedish, it is a verb form only used to form the perfect tense.

Serial verbs 

These are verbs which derive TAM and subject and so on from a previous verb.

Converbs

Subordinate infinite verbs that provide some kind of additional information about the main verb: 'while singing', 'by poking', 'not to annoy ...', 'so as to unshackle'.

Transgressives

This seems to be a west slavic term for converbs.

Plan

I will present some of these categories in some detail, and then go into greater detail with regards to the systems present in several languages, sometimes comparing and contrasting similar languages (like Swedish and English). Later on, I may get back to a sort of 'typologizing' description of the categories. My intention is to map out at least some of the interesting bits of this parameter space for conlangers.