Non-finite clauses are always subordinate, don’t show primary tense or agreement information, often lack a subject, and often refer to a possible situation rather than an actualized one. There are five kinds: ‘to’-infinitival & bare infinitival with a plain-form verb; gerund-participial with a gerund-participle verb; past-participial with a past-participle verb; and verbless clauses. The subordinators ‘for’ and ‘to’ in infinitival clauses mark subjects and head VPs respectively.
A pronoun subject in a non-finite clause may be in genitive or accusative case. If a clause has no subject, a predicand can often be determined syntactically by looking at a linguistic antecedent, often the subject of the main clause. In other cases, it must be inferred, either from something in the discourse or as a participant in the speech act. Hollow non-finite clauses lack both a subject and a non-subject NP, the semantic content of which is recoverable from an antecedent.
Some verbs taking infinitival complements are transparent. The syntactic subject of such a verb is the predicand of its clausal complement but not of the matrix clause. The subject is said to be raised. There are also raised objects.
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