Independent elements

To the group of independent elements, that is, words which have no grammatical connection with the sentence in which they stand, belong: a) modal-words (parenthetical words),

b) words of affirmation and negation (yes and no),

c) interjections.

7(en) A finite verb is a form of a verb that has a subject (expressed or implied) and can function as the root of an independent clause; an independent clause can, in turn, stand alone as a complete sentence. In many languages, finite verbs are the locus of grammatical information of gender, person, number, tense, aspect, mood, and/or voice.Finite verbs are distinguished from non-finite verbs, such as infinitives, participles, etc., which generally mark these grammatical categories to a lesser degree or not at all, and which appear below the finite verb in the hierarchy of syntactic structure. The finite verbs are in bold in the following sentences, and the non-finite verbs are underlined:

Verbs appear in almost all sentences. This sentence is illustrating finite and non-finite verbs.The dog will have been trained well. Tom promises to try to do the work.

In many languages (including English), there can be just one finite verb at the root of each clause (unless the finite verbs are coordinated), whereas the number of non-finite verbs can reach up to five or six, or even more, e.g.

He was believed to have been told to have himself examined.

Finite verbs can appear in dependent clauses as well as independent ones:

John said that he enjoyed reading.

Something you make yourself seems better than something you buy.

Most types of verbs can appear in finite or non-finite form (and sometimes these forms may be identical): for example, the English verb go has the finite forms go, goes, and went, and the non-finite forms go, going and gone. The English modal verbs (can, could, will, etc.) are defective and lack non-finite forms.

It might seem that every grammatically complete sentence or clause must contain a finite verb. However, sentences lacking a finite verb were quite common in the old Indo-European languages, and still occur in many present-day languages. The most important type of these are nominal sentences. Another type are sentence fragments described as phrases or minor sentences. A finite verb is generally expected to have a subject, as it does in all the examples above, although null-subject languages allow the subject to be omitted.

In English, finite verbs lacking subjects are normal in imperative sentences, and also occur in some fragmentary utterances. Come over here!

Depending on the language, finite verbs can inflect for the following grammatical categories:

Gender, e.g. masculine, feminine or neuter

Person, e.g. 1st, 2nd, or 3rd (I/we, you, he/she/it/they)

Number, e.g. singular or plural (or dual)

Tense, e.g. present, past or future

Aspect, e.g. perfect, perfective, progressive, etc.

Mood, e.g. indicative, subjunctive, imperative, optative, etc.

Voice, e.g. active or passive

The first three categories represent agreement information that the finite verb gets from its subject (by way of subject–verb agreement). The second four categories serve to situate the clause content according to time in relation to the speaker (tense), extent to which the action, occurrence, or state is complete (aspect), assessment of reality or desired reality (mood), and relation of the subject to the action or state (voice).

English is a synthetic language, which means it has limited ability to express these categories by verb inflection, and often conveys such information periphrastically, using auxiliary verbs. In a sentence such as

Sam laughs a lot the verb form agrees in person (3rd) and number (singular) with the subject, by means of the -s ending, and this form also indicates tense (present), aspect ("simple"), mood (indicative) and voice (active). However most combinations of these categories need to be expressed using auxiliaries:

Sam will have been examined by this afternoon.

Here the auxiliaries will, have and been express respectively future time, perfect aspect and passive voice

A non-finite verb (sometimes called a verbal) is any of several verb forms that are not finite verbs; that is, they cannot serve as the root of an independent clause. The non-finite verb forms found in English are infinitives, participles and gerunds; additional such forms found in some other languages include gerundives and supines. Non-finite verbs are typically not inflected for tense, and compared with finite verbs usually display less inflection for other grammatical categories as well. They also typically lack a subject dependent. A typical finite clause is based on a single finite verb, but it may in addition contain one or more non-finite verbs, building a verb catena with the finite verb. Since English lacks inflectional morphology to a large extent, the finite and non-finite forms of a given verb are often identical. In such cases, one has to examine the environment in which the verb appears to know whether it is finite or non-finite.

The infinitive of a verb is considered the "base" form; it is the form that is listed in dictionaries. Infinitives in English appear in verb catenae where they are introduced by an auxiliary verb or by a certain limited class of main verbs. They are also often frequently introduced by a main verb followed by the particle to (as illustrated in the trees below). Further, infinitives introduced by to can function as noun phrases, or even as modifiers of nouns.

Participles in English can be divided along two lines: according to aspect (progressive vs. perfect/perfective) and voice (active vs. passive).

A gerund is a verb form that appears in positions that are usually reserved for nouns. In English, a gerund has the same form as a progressive active participle (see above), ending in -ing. Gerunds typically appear as subject or object noun phrases, or even as the object off a preposition.