In this video we'll be talking about non-finite and verbless clauses. Now, if you've studied
dependent and independent clauses before, you might be thinking, well, what are these? Are
these new clauses? And the truth is that they're not entirely new. You should think of them more
as hidden or implied clauses -- so they're often going to overlap with dependent and independent
clauses. Most of the time they're really a type of dependent clause, but they're a little bit
tricky because there's usually something missing that we would expect in a regular clause. If we
look at our review sentence, for instance, here we have just our basic kind of sentence, with a
dependent clause and an independent clause. The first one cannot stand by itself. It has this
little word "when," which ties this clause to the next, and [as for] the second one,
we could easily have this as a sentence by itself. So that's a quick review of the basics,
and you might also recall that each of these clauses tends to have a subject and a verb.
Now the thing about these types of clauses is that the verb is usually what we call a "finite verb."
What we mean by the word "finite" is that it is limited in some way. If we talk about a "finite
resource," that's a resource that might run out. Now a finite verb ... is marked for three things
in particular, and these are tense, (present tense, past tense -- that kind of thing),
number (and here we're talking about singular versus plural) and also person. So,
first person, second person, third person. If we look at our verbs in the example here,
you can see that we have the verb "saw" and we have the verb "looked" and we can change these
based on tense, number, and person. For instance, I can say, "I see," but I can also say "they saw."
And if we look at these two examples, it's pretty obvious that we're moving from singular to plural.
We're moving from first person to third person, and we've moved from the present tense to the past
tense. So we've gone through all these factors here to change the verb in order to make the verb
agree with its subject. And that's why we call this a finite verb. That's what we expect to see
in a regular kind of clause -- whether it's dependent or independent, and that's where we're
going to upset the apple cart so to speak and see something very different in that our first set of
clauses is going to consist of non-finite clauses, which have non-finite verbs. Well what are those?
It might be helpful if I start with a specific example here. The example would be something
like "seeing." You might know that this is a present participle. It ends in "ing." So the
present participle -- there we go -- ends in "ing" and it's kind of timeless. It doesn't tell us what
tense it is -- that the seeing action is taking place at any point in time. It's unlimited
and that's why we call it non-finite as opposed to finite. If you've studied parts
of speech you might recall that we talked about verbals, and non-finite verbs are essentially the
same as verbals. There are some minor differences and I don't want to get into that right now, but if
you've studied verbals you'll recognize the same thing here: when we're talking about non-finite
verbs we're really talking about present participles (which we just looked at), we're talking
about infinitives (and an infinitive is really "to" plus the verb, so "to see"), and we're talking
about past participles (which in the case of "see" would be "seen").
Alright, if we have these types of non-finite verbs instead of a regular verb,
but we also have the rest of the elements of a typical clause, or at least some of them,
then we might say, well, this is a non-finite clause. It's missing some of the stuff we would
expect to see normally, but there's enough here to say, "This is still a clause."
And there are four non-finite clauses, then. Starting with the first one here, we have, "Yesterday,
they left for Mars ..." That's an independent clause and then this last bit "never to return again" -- this
as you can see has the infinitive here: "to return." If we reconstruct this in our mind
we could say, "They never return again." And then we would have a subject "they," and a verb "return." So
the the thing with non-finite clauses is that if you can kind of mentally reconstruct them and say
this kind of looks like a clause (it has the features of a clause), let's just call it a
clause! Then you're probably dealing with either a non-finite or a verbless clause.
There's something missing, something different, but there's enough to tell you this is a clause.
Think of this as how if you look at a car and it has four tires, but you come across
a car with three, you might say well that's still a car! It just looks looks a bit different!
So our first example, then, is the infinitive -- a non-finite clause with an infinitive.
Our second one is very similar. We have this last little bit here:
"sit in the corner," which is a non-finite clause, and here we have what we call a "bare infinitive."
What that means is that the word "to" is missing. There's no "to" here.
We could put "to" in parentheses here: "to sit in the corner. We have to kind of imply that.
But ... the rest of the clause has the main functions of a clause again. There's
extra information: "in the corner," which is a prepositional phrase ...
We can supply the subject "he" in this case, and we can change the infinitive to
a regular finite verb in our mind. So we could say "he sits in the corner."
Now it's important to recognize that these are clauses because otherwise we have
parts of the sentence that just don't fit in anywhere when we're analyzing them. We just don't
quite know what to make of them. It just seems like extra information and that's why this is
so useful to know. Our third example here is a present participle ...
"After receiving some Studio Ghibli sheet music in the mail."
And then we get our independent clause: "he spent the entire afternoon behind the piano."
So looking at this opening clause, then, you can see that it has a lot of features
of the typical clause. "After" -- this is the word that connects this clause to what comes later.
There's an object to "receiving." Receiving what? Some studio ghibli sheet music. So the only
thing that's really missing is a subject. Who is receiving? And what's missing is a finite verb.
But there's enough here to say, okay, we've got a present participle, a non-finite verb. Let's just
call it a non-finite clause and it's close enough to a regular clause. And then our final one here
(I think you start to see the pattern) ... this is the past participle. It has the past participle
"registered." It has some other features, like this subordinating conjunction again ties this
to what comes later. It has a little prepositional phrase. [It is] missing a subject obviously, but again this
this is something that we can imply. So those are the four non-finite clauses: infinitive, bare
infinitive, present participle, and past participle. Our last example will deal with a verbless clause.
So far we've often seen that the subject is missing, but here the verb is missing,
and this last part of the sentence -- "each little taller than the last" -- we can see that "each" can
be a subject. All we have to supply is a verb. So we could say each "was."
Or if we want to kind of integrate [that] into the rest of the sentence we could say "each being ...
a little taller than the last." And there's enough here to make this into a clause.
Almost every time that we have a verbless clause it's some version of "to be" that's missing.
If you simply supply that verb you can say, hey, it has the function of a clause! So
those are verbless clauses, and the same pattern applies: these are hidden or are kind of implied
clauses. What I'd like to end with is just a note about some tricky cases, because one of the things
that you'll find is that often these clauses that are not complete overlap with phrases.
So if you look at these two examples... In the first one [we read] "sending you cards in the mail."
We can say, okay, this is a non-finite clause. It has a present participle in "sending" and there's
some other features of a clause as well. There's a prepositional phrase here at the end.
"Cards is the direct object. "You" is the indirect object: sending
cards to you. Okay, so lots of features of a clause. If we just change it a bit we we have the regular
thing. But the last one, here all we have is "running." We just have a present participle,
and we can say, okay, well, this functions like a noun. I like what? I like running,
in which case this is what we call a gerund. A gerund is a present participle that acts like a noun.
And we might be better just to classify this as a noun phrase then -- rather than say
this is the beginning of a clause. There's just not enough here to really say this is like a
clause right. That's where you see this kind of shading of one thing into another. It's hard to
say is this a clause [or] is this a phrase? There are moments when the two come so close together
that we can disagree about that and that's okay. But the main thing I hope is that you've been able
to see how these verbless and non-finite clauses act really like hidden and implied regular clauses.
If you understand that concept I think you'll be well prepared to spot them in a sentence.