FINITE VERB

Definition: Finite verbs (sometimes called main verbs) are verb forms suitable for use in predicates in that they carry inflections or other formal characteristics limiting their number(singular / plural), person, and tense(past / present etc). Finite verbs can function on their own as the core of an independent sentence.

For example

• I walked, they walk, and she walks are finite verbs
  * (to) walk is an infinitive.
• I lived in Germay.
  * "I" is the subject. "Lived" describes what the subject did. "Lived" is a finite verb.

Examples

• The truck demolished the restaurant.
• The leaves were yellow and sickly.

non-finite verb (or a verbal) is a verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflected by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender, and person. As a result, a non-finite verb cannot serve as a predicate and can be used in an independent clause only when combined with an auxiliary verb (e.g., "He can write" but not "He to write"). Rather, it can be said to head a non-finite clause.

By some accounts, a non-finite verb acts simultaneously as a verb and as another part of speech (e.g., gerunds combined with articles or the possessive case); 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.

English has three kinds of verbals:

1. participles, which include past and present participles and function as adjectives (e.g. burnt log, a betting man);
2. gerunds, which function as nouns and can be used with or without an article (the Running of the Bulls, studying Latin is a way to better understand English)
3. infinitives, which have noun-like (the question is to be or not to be), adjective-like (work to do), and adverb-like functions (she came over to talk). If in order can precede the infinitive ("she came over in order to talk"), then it must be acting as an adverb.^[1]