50 Examples of Infinitive, Gerund and Participle

Infinitive, Gerund and Participle

The infinitive, gerund and participle it's three non-personal forms of the verb, that is, those that do not admit conjugation and therefore are not defined by the characteristics of the verb (time, mode, number and person). For example: to sleep (infinitive), sleeping (gerund), slept (participle).

The non-personal forms of the verb are also called verboids and have the particularity of not occupying the usual function of the verb but instead take another role in the sentence:

The infinitive

The infinitive it is usually understood as the elementary form of the verb, to which no inflection has yet been applied.

However, there are times when the infinitive appears in the sentence and that is when you want to talk action as an autonomous subject. In these cases it works as a noun and fulfills its syntactic roles. For example: To walk It is very healthy.("Walk" is the subject of prayer)

Infinitives also appear in the sentence when a compound verb is being used, or a sentence in which one verb requires another. For example: I have to to be, start to understand.

The participle

The participles are those forms in which the verb becomes an adjective. In this case, the verb happens to represent a state that can be assigned to a noun, usually with the ending -ido or -ado, but sometimes (the "irregular" endings) with the ending -erto, -elto, -esto.

The participles are also used in compound verb tenses, after the verb to have. For example: we have arrived, you had met.

The participle often comes in a continuation of some inflection of the verb ‘ser’ or ‘estar’, as it usually happens in adjectives. It is the only of the verboids that can have an inflection in gender and number. For example: tired, tired, tired, tired.

The gerund

The gerunds are, among the verboids, the ones that most resemble the verbs because at some point they continue to represent an action: the difference it has with the conjugated verbs is that this is not defined by the characteristics of the verb which are the time, the mode, the number and the person.

Gerunds are constructed by adding the ending -ando or -endo as appropriate. For example: studying, reading.

A gerund will never be presented in simple form, it will always require a verb to precede it (any action verb) where the gerund fulfills the function of adverb. For example: It's raining, I came running

Examples of infinitive

Examples of participles

Examples of gerunds