Language Description

•Lecturer : Miss Goh Meng Hong

•Group : 2

•Members :

Hisyan Bin Ruaini

Amirul Asyraf Bin Baharuddin

Mohd Afif Bin Nor Setilah

Ahmad Izzuddin Bin Ibrahim

1

Non-finite verbs

infinitives participles gerunds

Definition

has no subject, tense or

number.

Are infinitives, participles and

gerunds

INFINITIVES ACTIVE PASSIVE

Present Tense To hear To be heard

Perfect Tense To have heard To have been heard

PARTICIPLES ACTIVE PASSIVE

Present Tense hearing being heard

Perfect Tense having heard (having been ) heard

GERUNDS ACTIVE PASSIVE

Present Tense hearing being heard

Present Tense having heard having been heard

Infinitives

The present infinitive active to hear is

often called the infinitive of the verb

“hear”; and the equivalent of “to hear” is

the form of the verb which is listed in the

dictionaries of many foreign languages.

The following passages uses all of the

infinitives in turn:

‘I was so glad to hear your voice on the

phone. I am pleased to have heard from

john, too.John’s ambition is to be heard on

the radio.His father is still proud to have

been heard singing in a pre-war concert’

In modern English, the “to” of the infinitives

is omitted when it follows certain other

verbs.

Example:-

I need to say anymore.(I do not need to say.....)

We dared not resist.(We did not dare to resist)

I can tell you the result.(I am able to tell you...)

Split infinitives

To ‘split’ an infinitive means to put this

adverb between the to and the rest of

the infinitive.

Example;

To frequently forget.

To completely have been forgotten.

Though the old rule of never splitting your

infinitives may be too sweeping, you are

often likely to produce better English if you

avoid a split infinitive. There are several

ways of moving the adverb out of the danger

zone.

Example;

Frequently to forget; or to forget frequently.

To have been completely forgotten; or to

have been forgotten completely.

Participles

Are verbal adjectives (adjective formed

from verbs).

There are 4 participles (see table on the

3rd slide).

Help to form finite tenses.

Describe nouns and pronouns.

Forming finite tenses :

The participles hearing, being heard, and heard form part most of the indicative and many of the subjunctive tenses.

The tenses are produced by combining these participles with auxiliary (helping) verbs such as I am, I was, I have, I have been.

The participles also form part of some tenses of the infinitives and the gerunds.

Describing nouns and pronouns

:

Like all adjectives, participles describe

or qualify nouns and pronouns.

Present participles are used in the

following examples :

1. a rolling stone gathers no moss.

2. we saw a boulder rolling down the

mountain.

Both present participles are active, the

first describe stone, the second describe

boulder.

3. we watched the barrels being rolled

into the warehouse.

Here being rolled is a passive present

participles describing barrels.

Perfect participles are used in these

examples :

1. having spoken, he sat down.

2. he went home, delighted by the

enthusiasm of the audience.

In each sentence the participles

describes he.

With objects :

Because they are verbal adjectives,

actives participles of transitive verbs can

have objects.

In the sentence ‘we watched him playing

football’, the present participle playing

describes him and has the object

football.

Participles out of control :

A participles qualifies a noun or a pronoun; but, to show which noun or pronoun a participle belongs to, you must keep strict control over its position in the sentence.

Otherwise, almost as if the particile had a life in its own, it can become attached to the wrong noun – or even left ‘floating’ without a noun at all.

As a result, a sentence may acquire a meaning which was not intended or be reduced to nonsense.

Examples :

1. ‘washing the car, the postman brought me a letter.’ this can only mean that the postman was washing the car, which is not the speaker’s intention. The sentence should begin ‘As I was washing. . . ‘

2. ‘seeing the Cathedral tower ahead, the market-place could not be far away.’ here the participle seeing has completely lost its noun or pronouns. Who was doing the seeing? Not the market-place, certainly, but some travellerwho then realized that the market-place. . .

3. ‘My father was stopped by a policeman hurrying down the road on his way to the railway station.’ here the sense is ambiguous. It could mean that the policeman was in a hurry to catch his train. But it was probably intended to mean : ‘my father, hurrying down the road on his way to the railway station, was stopped by a policeman.’

The examples use present participles

because these are the most liable to get

out of control.

But similar mistakes can also be made

with perfect participles.

The only way to avoid them is to make

sure that a participle belongs to a noun

or a pronoun, and that it is placed as

near as possible in order to make the

meaning quite clear.

Gerunds

gerund is identical in form to the

present participle (ending in -ing) and

can behave as a verb within

a clause (so that it may be modified by

an adverb or have an object), but the

clause as a whole (sometimes

consisting of only one word, the gerund

itself) acts as a noun within the larger

sentence

example: Eating this cake is easy

Some use "gerund" to refer to all nouns

ending in -ing, but in more careful use,

not all nouns ending in -ing are gerunds

gerund is a verbal noun – a noun

derived from a verb that retains verb

characteristics, that

functions simultaneously as a noun and

a verb, while other nouns ending in -

ing are deverbal nouns, which function

as common noun like fencing. (gerund,

an activity, could be replaced with "to

fence")mon nouns, not as verbs at all

gerund has nominal and verbal

properties nominal characteristics of the gerund are as

follows:

The gerund can perform the function of subject, object and predicative:Smokingendangers your health. (subject)

I like making people happy. (object)

The gerund can be preceded by a preposition: I'm tired of arguing.

Like a noun the gerund can be modified by a noun in the possessive case, a possessive adjective, or an adjective: I wonder at John's keeping calm.

Is there any objection to my seeing her?

Brisk walking relieves stress.

The verbal characteristics of the gerund include the following:

The gerund of transitive verbs can take a direct object:

I've made good progress in speaking English.

The gerund can be modified by an adverb:

Breathing deeply helps you to calm down.

The gerund has the distinctions of aspect and voice.

Having read the book once before makes me more prepared.

Being deceived can make someone feel angry.

Summary of the non-finite parts

of a verb The infinitive are the forms of a verb which are

proceeded by to, but the to of the infinitive is omitted in modern English when it follows certain other verbs. It is usually advisable to avoid “splitting” an infinitive, which means placing an adverb between to and the rest of the infinitive.

The participles are verbal adjectives.They are used together with auxiliary verbs to form most of the indicative tenses (and also many of the subjunctive and imperative forms and some tenses of the infinitive and the gerund). Like other adjectives, they can also qualify nouns and pronouns.A common mistake is to misplace sentence (participles out of control).

The gerunds are verbal nouns.