Verb chains are a means of placing multiple ideas into the same term by stringing together infinitives and gerunds. The equivalent structures for nouns and pronouns are lists and pairs. These are composite grammatical structures that can be used wherever a single noun, pronoun or name can be used. A noun or pronoun refers to only one entity whereas a pair refers to two entities and a list refers to multiple entities.

There are no restrictions with regard to the use of pairs, lists, nouns and names. They can be used as both the subject and complement with a copula, as the subject with an intransitive verb, as the subject, direct object and indirect object with a transitive verb and in a prepositional phrase as part of an adverbial component.