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For present participle constructions with perfect aspect (e.g. having written), see § Perfect and progressive nonfinite constructions below. Present participles may come to be used as pure adjectives (see Types of participle). Examples of participles that do this frequently are interesting, exciting, and enduring.
The following sentences illustrate some uses of gerund clauses, showing how such a clause serves as a noun within the larger sentence. In some cases, the clause consists of just the gerund (although in many such cases the word could equally be analyzed as a pure verbal noun). Swimming is fun. (gerund as subject of the sentence) I like swimming.
Other terms that have been used to refer to converbs include adverbial participle, conjunctive participle, gerund, gerundive and verbal adverb (Ylikoski 2003). Converbs are differentiated from coverbs, verbs in complex predicates in languages that have the serial verb construction.
The past participle is been, and the present participle and gerund is the regular being. The base form be is used regularly as an infinitive, imperative and (present) subjunctive. For archaic forms, see the next section. English has a number of modal auxiliary verbs which are defective.
An adverbial participle (or a participial phrase/clause based on such a participle) plays the role of an adverbial phrase in the sentence in which it appears, whereas an adjectival participle (or a participial phrase/clause based on one) plays the role of an adjective phrase.
A non-finite clause is similar, except that the verb must be in a non-finite form (such as an infinitive, participle, gerund or gerundive), and it is consequently much more likely that there will be no subject expressed, i.e. that the clause will consist of a (non-finite) verb phrase on its own. Some examples are given below. Finite clauses
The perfect tense or aspect (abbreviated PERF or PRF) is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself. An example of a perfect construction is I have made dinner.
Another example can be found from Ket: [7] fèmba.di, “I am a Tungus” dɨ.fen, “I am standing” In Turkic, and a few Uralic and Australian Aboriginal languages, predicative adjectives and copular complements take affixes that are identical to those used on predicative verbs, but their negation is different. For example, in Turkish: