Hello everyone.

I'm following this discussion with keen interest, but for the sake of
clarity (in my email, at least!) I am going to cut out things I am not
directly replying to...

Regarding this:

It might very well be the case that Bill is right when he writes the
following:

*******
I have trouble accepting "sentenceness" as something that pre-exists our
definitions as a kind of fundamental category, at least in the way we've
traditionally defined sentences.
*******
If the definition of a sentence depends on whether we can begin the string
with a capital letter and end it with a period, 
then Bill is definitely right.

I say:

Here's where I start feeling a bit murky, myself.  Maybe if I provide an
example of what I am talking about on my end, it will help...

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, manuscript A:

63. Her Marcus se godspellere forþferde (http://asc.jebbo.co.uk/a/a-L.html)

Translates to modern English as:

A.D. 63.  This year Mark the evangelist departed this life.
(http://omacl.org/Anglo/part1.html) 

Now, leaving aside the historical complications for the sake of argument
(the Chronicle was compiled over a lengthy period of time, by multiple
authors, etc), my question is this:

How is the entry above NOT a sentence?

This is why I keep challenging what the phrase "traditionally defined
sentence" means.  My "personal headspace" suggests that the line above (and
other forms of writing like it) pre-date what we're now using as
"traditional definitions for the sentence."  Yet, the entry cited above
meets all the definitions of a sentence that I can think of.

Or am I the one over-thinking this? (It's certainly possible!)

-patty

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