Advanced written Catalan often compresses a finite clause into an infinitive, gerund, or participle construction: després d'haver deliberat, havent comprovat les dades, acabada la sessió. This is especially productive in (formal), (academic), and (literary) prose. Compression is not automatically elegant, however. A nonfinite form suppresses tense and usually suppresses an overt subject, so the writer must make event order and subject control recoverable.
The basic forms are developed separately under the perfect infinitive, the compound gerund, and absolute participles.
The governing principle is simple: use a nonfinite clause when its omitted information is easy to reconstruct. If readers must stop to guess who acted or whether one event preceded another, a finite clause is clearer.
The three core shapes
| Construction | Form | Main contribution | Typical register |
|---|---|---|---|
| perfect infinitive | haver + participle | prior event inside an infinitival environment | neutral to formal |
| perfect gerund | havent + participle | completed circumstance before the main event | formal/literary |
| absolute participle | participle + noun phrase | resulting state or completed frame | formal/literary |
The participle after haver normally stays in the masculine singular: haver revisat les actes, havent revisat les actes. With a preceding third-person direct-object clitic, standard Catalan also permits agreement (haver-les revisades, havent-les revisades), especially in careful and regional usage. In an absolute participial clause, by contrast, the participle necessarily agrees with its own noun phrase: revisades les actes, tancada la porta, resolts els dubtes.
Després d'haver contrastat les fonts, l'equip va retirar aquella xifra.
After checking the sources against one another, the team withdrew that figure.
Havent contrastat les fonts, l'equip va retirar aquella xifra.
Having checked the sources against one another, the team withdrew that figure. (formal)
Contrastades les fonts, l'equip va retirar aquella xifra.
Once the sources had been checked, the team withdrew that figure. (formal/literary)
The three versions share anteriority but profile it differently. The infinitive follows a preposition and keeps the agent controlled by l'equip. The gerund presents the checking as an accompanying circumstance. The absolute participle foregrounds the completed state of les fonts and leaves the checker unexpressed.
Perfect infinitives: prior action under another head
The perfect infinitive haver + participle marks an event as earlier than the viewpoint supplied by a governing verb, preposition, or adjective. It is particularly useful after verbs of memory, admission, denial, appearance, and regret.
La consellera va admetre haver rebut l'informe abans de la votació.
The councillor admitted having received the report before the vote.
Els autors lamenten no haver distingit prou bé les dues mostres.
The authors regret not having distinguished the two samples clearly enough. (academic)
El manuscrit sembla haver passat per tres tallers diferents.
The manuscript seems to have passed through three different workshops. (academic)
In the first two examples, the understood subject of haver rebut and haver distingit is controlled by the main subject. If the embedded agent differs, a finite que-clause is normally clearer: La consellera va negar que el secretari hagués rebut l'informe. English readily tolerates ambiguous “after reviewing” phrases; Catalan formal prose should not rely on that looseness.
Weak pronouns attach to the infinitive auxiliary: haver-ho rebut, haver-se'n adonat, haver-los-el lliurat. Nothing may intervene between haver and the participle.
La ponent es disculpà per no haver-nos-ho comunicat abans.
The speaker apologized for not having told us about it earlier. (formal/literary main verb)
The accent in haver-nos-ho is not required because the infinitive still ends in -r and the attached clitics do not change the written stress pattern. Forms such as haver-m'ho and haver-t'ho follow the same hyphen and apostrophe rules.
Perfect gerunds: a completed circumstance
The compound gerund havent + participle frames its event as completed before the main clause. Its subject is normally the same as the subject of that main clause.
Havent examinat les dues còpies, la paleògrafa descartà que fossin de la mateixa mà.
Having examined both copies, the paleographer ruled out that they were by the same hand. (academic/literary)
No havent rebut cap resposta, vam ajornar la reunió fins dilluns.
Not having received any reply, we postponed the meeting until Monday. (formal)
Negation precedes the gerund: no havent rebut. Weak pronouns follow havent: havent-ho comprovat, havent-se'n adonat. The participle is normally invariable; the optional direct-object-clitic agreement just described also occurs here (havent-les revisades), but it is never agreement with the gerund's subject.
The simple gerund instead usually expresses simultaneity or manner: Va travessar el pati corrent. Neither simple nor perfect gerund should narrate a later consequence as though it were an English “-ing” clause.
Va caure de l'escala i es va trencar el canell.
He fell from the ladder and broke his wrist.
Writing Va caure de l'escala, trencant-se el canell makes the gerund carry a subsequent result. This posteriority gerund is rejected in careful standard prose. Coordinate the events or use a finite relative/consecutive clause.
Absolute participles: compact result states
An absolute participial clause contains its own noun phrase. The participle agrees with that noun and presents the situation as completed before, or as a state simultaneous with, the main clause.
Tancada la sessió, els periodistes envoltaren la portaveu.
Once the session was closed, the journalists surrounded the spokesperson. (formal/literary)
Resolts els dos últims recursos, el tribunal publicarà la sentència.
Once the final two appeals have been resolved, the court will publish the judgment. (formal)
Els braços plegats i la mirada fixa a terra, esperava que algú trenqués el silenci.
Arms folded and gaze fixed on the ground, she waited for someone to break the silence. (literary)
The first two are temporal-resultative frames. The third is a verbless/participial descriptive frame characteristic of literary prose. Agreement provides structural information: tancada points to feminine singular sessió; resolts points to masculine plural recursos.
The noun phrase normally follows the participle in the most compact formal pattern: acabada la reunió. Fronting it—la reunió acabada—can instead sound like an ordinary noun phrase or a marked literary absolute, depending on punctuation and context. Do not rely on word order alone; agreement and intonation matter.
Subject control: the test for a safe compression
In an adjunct gerund or a controlled infinitive, the omitted subject normally comes from the main clause. That creates a strict editing test:
Havent acabat l'informe, la investigadora va apagar l'ordinador.
Having finished the report, the researcher turned off the computer.
❌ Havent acabat l'informe, l'ordinador es va apagar tot sol.
Faulty control—the sentence grammatically suggests that the computer finished the report.
✅ Quan la investigadora va acabar l'informe, l'ordinador es va apagar tot sol.
When the researcher finished the report, the computer shut itself down.
The error is not merely stylistic. Suppressing the gerund's subject instructs the reader to identify it with the main subject, l'ordinador. Restoring a finite clause makes both subjects explicit.
Some (literary) constructions tolerate an overt postposed subject, such as essent encara viva l'autora. They are marked and should remain genuinely useful, not a device for evading ordinary sentence structure.
Essent encara viva l'autora, l'arxiu no farà pública la correspondència.
While the author is still alive, the archive will not make the correspondence public. (formal/literary)
Here l'autora is the overt subject of essent, while l'arxiu is the subject of farà. Punctuation helps readers keep the two clauses apart.
Density, rhythm, and finite alternatives
Nonfinite clauses remove repeated subjects and conjunctions, which can create calm, hierarchical prose. Stacking them produces the opposite effect:
Havent examinat l'expedient i havent-ne verificat els annexos, la comissió, reunida a porta tancada, acordà reobrir el procediment.
Having examined the file and checked its appendices, the committee, meeting behind closed doors, agreed to reopen the procedure. (dense formal style)
The sentence is grammatical, but it asks the reader to manage two perfect gerunds, a participial modifier, and a synthetic past. In a public information text, two finite sentences may be better. C2 style means controlling density, not maximizing it.
Register also constrains the choice. Després de mirar-ho bé, vam dir que no is ordinary conversation. Havent-ho ponderat detingudament, resolguérem desestimar la proposta is (formal) and may sound pompous in a family message.
Do not treat every sequence containing an infinitive or an English “-ing” form as literary compression. In Ahir vam publicar l'informe, vam + infinitive is the finite periphrastic past; vam anar a publicar l'informe retains movement and purpose because it contains a. English progressive wording likewise does not by itself require estar + gerund. Finally, a nonfinite clause cannot display the indicative–subjunctive contrast: when the identity of the subject or the assertion status matters, a finite clause such as va negar que el secretari hagués rebut l'informe is often the more informative choice.
Mini-dialogue: an editorial decision
—Puc escriure «havent rebut la queixa, el termini va començar»? —No: sembla que el termini hagi rebut la queixa. Escriu «quan l'oficina va rebre la queixa, va començar a córrer el termini».
—Can I write 'having received the complaint, the deadline began'? —No: it sounds as though the deadline received the complaint. Write 'when the office received the complaint, the deadline began to run.'
The finite version is slightly longer and decisively clearer.
Common Mistakes
1. Making a compound participle agree with an ordinary following object.
❌ Després d'haver revisades les actes, va signar.
Incorrect—the participle after haver is invariable.
✅ Després d'haver revisat les actes, va signar.
After reviewing the minutes, she signed.
2. Failing to make an absolute participle agree.
❌ Acabat la conferència, el públic va sortir.
Incorrect—absolute acabada must agree with feminine singular conferència.
✅ Acabada la conferència, el públic va sortir.
Once the lecture ended, the audience left.
3. Leaving the nonfinite subject dangling.
❌ Havent consultat l'advocada, la decisió semblava més segura.
Faulty control—the decision did not consult the lawyer.
✅ Després de consultar l'advocada, ens semblava més segura la decisió.
After consulting the lawyer, the decision seemed safer to us.
4. Using a gerund for a later result.
❌ Va presentar el recurs, obtenint una resposta dos mesos després.
Incorrect in careful prose—the response occurred later, not simultaneously.
✅ Va presentar el recurs i va obtenir una resposta dos mesos després.
She filed the appeal and received a response two months later.
5. Copying a Spanish auxiliary.
❌ Habiendo comprovat les dades, van publicar l'article.
Incorrect Catalan—habiendo is Spanish.
✅ Havent comprovat les dades, van publicar l'article.
Having checked the data, they published the article.
Key Takeaways
- Haver + participle and havent + participle mark anteriority; their participles are normally invariable, apart from standard optional agreement with certain preceding direct-object clitics.
- Absolute participles agree with their own noun phrase and foreground a completed state.
- A controlled nonfinite clause normally inherits the main-clause subject; repair any mismatch with a finite clause.
- Gerunds express simultaneity, manner, or an anterior circumstance—not a later consequence.
- Literary compression is effective only when event order and agency remain immediately recoverable.
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Start learning Catalan →Related Topics
- Infinitives after Modal and Control VerbsA2 — Combine poder, voler, saber, intentar, decidir, and prometre with an infinitive, and identify who performs the infinitive's action.
- The Perfect InfinitiveB1 — Use haver plus a participle to express an action already completed relative to a modal, preposition, report, or hypothetical viewpoint.
- The Compound GerundA2 — Form the Catalan compound gerund with havent plus a participle and use it for a completed circumstance before another event.
- The Posterior Gerund ProblemA2 — Recognize gerunds that wrongly express a later result or consequence and repair them with clear finite clauses.
- Avoiding Dangling GerundsA2 — Keep a Catalan gerund tied to the person or thing that performs its action, and repair ambiguous passive and impersonal sentences.
- Absolute Participial ConstructionsA2 — Use a detached agreeing participle to frame a completed circumstance, usually in concise formal or written Catalan.