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 To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/