Non-Finite Verb Forms

There are two major nonfinite verb forms: the participles and the gerund.

Participles

Participles decline for realis and irrealis moods, as well as active and passive conjugations. The realis is used for events which have already happened or occur as a general truth or in the present. The irrealis, meanwhile, translates to actions desired or required by the speaker, similar to a gerundive. 

Participles are used attributively, being used as adjectives or to form relative clauses. If the subject of such a clause is different than the referent, the subject declines for the genitive case. They are also used substantially, being extensively used to derive new words.

Gerund

The gerund serves various functions, the most common of which being adverbial functions.

When declined in various oblique cases, the gerund serves various roles in subordinate and temporal clauses. In the accusative, the gerund describes a purpose similar to the meaning ‘while Xing, ’. With the genitive, the gerund translates to ‘having Xed’, and with the dative, the gerund translates to ‘in order to X’ or ‘because of X’. Finally, the instrumental case bears the meaning of ‘by means of X’.

Additional uses for these gerunds may depend on the tense of the verb or preceding particles.