Using the criterion of truth/falsity for natural language is not 
useful, especially not for judging sentencehood. Formal logic is a 
special system devised for purposes other than describing natural 
language, and, in terms of expression of meaning, is impoverished by 
comparison with natural language, as (I think) Herb pointed out. The 
sentence "The moon is made of green cheese" is false, but it is still a 
sentence, by the criterion of being an independent clause.

I don't see how the sentence "He lives in a green house" does not 
assert that the house is green. It certainly does not suppose that the 
house is green; a supposition is something the speaker is not sure of 
(if this is not the logical definition, sorry; but if logic asserts 
that the speaker of this sentence is not declaring the house to be 
green, then it's wrong).

Sure a noun phrase is an argument of another predicate -- in this case, 
"a green house" is an argument of "lives". But natural language does 
not forbid inserting predicative/attributive information into the 
argument of a predicate. This is clearest when a clause is a verbal 
argument, such as subject or direct object.

What counts as a sentence certainly varies from language to language. 
But, of course, the task teachers of English face is helping students 
distinguish sentences from non-sentences according to the prescriptive 
norms of formal writing. The tests I gave in my last post are very 
helpful for doing this. I even once had a student who was very angry 
that no one had taught him such "tricks" in the past, while holding him 
responsible for "complete sentences".

For this practical purpose, I believe it is best to establish a firm 
definition of what counts as a sentence (and I am suggesting my 
criteria and terminology, of course).

Compliments to Craig on the excellent six statements he uses to start 
his students on grammar in writing classes. I hope he will not mind if 
I use them, with credit to him, of course. He situates the sentence 
exactly where it really is: in text. School grammar's obsessive focus 
on the individual sentence is one of its major flaws.

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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