The only reason" complete thought" was ever coined is to help 
students avoid sentence fragments (which now show up in the work of many 
fine writers.)  We use this misleading notion because we somehow believe 
that students can't understand what we really want, at least one 
independent clause within a sentence unit.  This requires, as Ed has 
been pointing out, an understanding of the role of finite verbs and some 
sense of subordination.  (Finite verbs are necessary, but not always 
sufficient.)  
    The problem with "complete thought" is that it purports to be about 
the rhetoric of the sentence (and not a constraint on form.)
I combat the misinformation with the following, which has become my 
FIRST way into grammar for my writing classes.

1)  A sentence is not a complete thought.  It is a move in a series of 
related moves.
2)  Sentence boundaries are very flexible.
3)  Sentences vary widely in the amount of information they contain.
4)  Sentences vary widely in the way that information is organized.
5)  Sentences occur within the context of other sentences.
6)  Sentences occur within the context of a writer's evolving purposes.

Students have been encouraged not to repeat themselves.  Taken in tandem 
with the "complete thought" notion, they believe their job is to present 
fifty or sixty "complete thoughts" in a 1,000 word essay. (And they 
often write that way, beginning with sentences that avoid getting to the 
point in order to avoid running out of things to say.)  Effective 
writers, on the other hand, tend to think in terms of  saying one (or a 
few things) and using  the fifty or sixty sentences to carry that out. 
 If you look closely at professional and student work--and I do exactly 
that with my students, the most recent being a paragraph from Stephen 
Crane's "The Open Boat"--you see an enormous carryover of meaning in the 
best writing, including a willingness to reassert key ideas and keep the 
same topic in focus over long stretches of text.  They tend to have more 
longer sentences than a typical student writer, but more short sentences 
as well.  They tend to put the most important information in key places, 
especially at the end of intonation units and a the end of the clause. 
 Student work can often be radically improved when viewed through this 
more rhetorical lens. Believe it or not, they tend to buy into it, pay 
attention, and put it to work.  The aim is in helping them achieve their 
own purposes, offering them tools, helping them put their own language 
to work.  
   It would be nice to put complete thought forever to rest, but we 
can't do so if we want to insist on eliminating fragments but are afraid 
to develop a sufficient base of understanding for that to truly happen.
   If it feels like a "complete thought" to a student and feels like 
that to a reader, are we willing to accept that?  Every time?  

Craig
   



Johanna Rubba wrote:

> As a few others have noted, "thought" is way to broad a term to name 
> much of anything about a sentence. "Complete thought" is not any better.
>
> It would be better to say that a _clause_ (or an independent clause) 
> expresses a proposition, as Bruce notes. A proposition in logic is a 
> statement that predicates something of an entity: "The sky is blue" 
> predicates, or attributes, blueness to the sky. The logical formula is 
> f(x), meaning "f is predicated of x".
>
> It might look like this corresponds closely to the subject/predicate 
> division in grammar, but it doesn't, once you move on from 
> linking-verb sentence patterns. But when you get to transitive and 
> other kinds of verbs, it doesn't line up so well:
>
> eat(child, cupcake) would be the formula for "The child is eating a 
> cupcake."
>
> I think I have this right.
>
> Ed also raises the question of what looks like propositions inside of 
> propositions:
>
> "He lives in a green house."
>
>
> Noun phrases with adjectives can be viewed as compressions of 
> propositions, as can nominalized clauses such as the subject of
>
> _The corporation's outsourcing of customer service calls_ has led to 
> complaints.
>
> There was once a theory of syntax that proposed that, indeed, even 
> noun phrases with adjectival modifiers were derived from "deep" 
> clauses; the theory was called generative semantics. As you can 
> imagine, the derivation of quite ordinary sentences grew quite 
> cumbersome.
>
> In any case, the logical-proposition idea is a good one, because it 
> shows the crucial role of the main verb. It is the verb that 
> determines the sentence pattern (linking, transitive, and so on).
>
> People concerned with correctness want sentences to "express a 
> complete thought". A much better criteria for valid sentencehood (that 
> is, the quality of being able to "stand alone") are (a) presence of a 
> finite (present- or past-marked) verb and (b) the item is not a 
> modifier or complement in a larger sentence (e.g., a relative 
> [adjective] or adverb clause).
>
> For relatively short sentences, there are two pretty good tests.
> (1) Can the sentence appear in the blank in the following?
> "I am convinced that  ____."
> (2) Can you add a tag to the sentence?
> "The hurricane wrought devastation across large areas of the Gulf 
> coast, _didn't it_?"
>
>
> 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
>
>
> 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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