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A finite verb is a verb that contextually complements a subject,Concerning the manifestation of a subject as an important criterion for identifying finite verbs, see Radford (1997:507f.). which can be either explicit (like in the English indicative) or implicit (like in null subject languages or the English Imperative mood). A finite transitive verb or a finite intransitive verb can function as the root of an independent clause. Finite verbs are distinguished from such as , , etc.
More recently, finite verbs have been construed as any verb that independently functions as a predicate verb or one that marks a verb phrase in a predicate. Under the first of those constructions, finite verbs often denote grammatical characteristics such as gender, person, number, tense, aspect, grammatical mood, modality, and voice. In the second of those constructions, a modal verb or a certain type of auxiliary verb also may function as a finite verb. Modal verbs and auxiliary verbs mark the abovementioned characteristics to varying degrees or not at all depending on the category from which verbs are drawn.
In many languages (including English), there can be one finite verb at the root of each clause (unless the finite verbs are coordinated), whereas the number of non-finite verb forms can reach up to five or six, or even more, e.g.
Finite verbs can appear in as well as independent clauses:
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 verb 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 .Concerning nominal sentences in old Indo-European languages, see Fortson (2004:143). Another type are sentence fragments described as or minor sentences. In Latin language and some Romance languages, there are a few words that can be used to form sentences without verbs, such as Latin ecce, Portuguese eis, French language voici and voilà, and Italian language ecco, all of these translatable as here ... is or here ... are. Some can play the same role. Even in English, utterances that lack a finite verb are common, e.g. Yes., No., Bill!, Thanks., etc.
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. For example, in the Latin language sentence cogito ergo sum ("I think therefore I am") the finite verbs cogito and sum appear without an explicit subject – the subject is understood to be the first-person personal pronoun, and this information is marked by the way the verbs are inflection. In English, finite verbs lacking subjects are normal in imperative mood sentences:
And also occur in some fragmentary utterances with an elliptical subject:
The first three categories represent agreement information that the finite verb gets from its subject (by way of subject–verb agreement). The other 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).
Modern English is an analytic language (Old English is frequently presented as a synthetic language), which means it has limited ability to express the categories by verb inflection, and it often conveys such information periphrasis, using . In a sentence such as
The phrase structure grammar trees are the a-trees on the left; they are similar to the trees produced in the government and binding framework.On such trees, see, for instance, Cowper (1992) and Haegeman (1994). The b-trees on the right are the dependency grammar trees.On such dependency trees, see, for instance, Eroms (2000). Many of the details of the trees are not important for the point at hand, but they show clearly that the finite verb (in bold each time) is the structural center of the clause. In the phrase structure trees, the highest projection of the finite verb, IP (inflection phrase) or CP (complementizer phrase), is the root of the entire tree. In the dependency trees, the projection of the finite verb (V) is the root of the entire structure.
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