Christine,

You’ve hit upon one of the classic sticking points in grammatical definitions. If we head toward technical definitions, we get something fairly satisfactory but which has some circularity built in. If we head toward something easily comprehensible to students (especially younger ones), we run the risk of oversimplifying to the point of uselessness (hence the discussion of “a complete thought”; if I’ve been having incomplete thoughts all of my life, how would I know?).

Technically, we can say that a sentence in written “Edited English” is anything that (a) a native speaker would accept as something possible to say, AND (b) is punctuated ending with a period, comma, or question mark AND (c) contains at least one independent clause. The problem is that independent clauses are defined as units that can stand alone as sentences, so there’s the circularity.

We can also define independent clauses as having a subject and a full predicate, and *not* beginning with a subordinator (terms like ‘because’ or ‘although’). There is still some circularity, however, since the decision to reject subordinate clauses as full sentences can be seen as a bit artificial – they aren’t full sentences because they do not make what editors will regard as a full sentence. Using a word that expresses a similar kind of meaning, such as “Therefore” instead of “Because,” miraculously allows a clause to remain independent. Why does “because” do one thing and “therefore” do something else?  Grammarians at some point in the past decided to treat them differently. They are clearly different in the sense that you cannot put ‘because’ in all the same locations you can put ‘however,’ but there’s no logical reason why that would confer sentencehood on a clause or withhold it. Had ideas about punctuation developed differently, we might have ended up requiring clauses starting with “therefore” to accompany their preceding clauses as well.

In the final analysis, I think, we just have to acknowledge that defining sentences is like defining “acceptable formal evening wear.” It’s an issue of conventions; no one need bother asking why a tie is a marker of formal men’s wear. We can trace the development of the idea, but that’s not the same as providing a non-social motivation for it. Circularity is not a cardinal sin in social conventions.

But, I should add, many people will probably disagree with this view (and with my starting this sentence with a coordinating conjunction….)

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan Universtiy

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of crg
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 2:01 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Each sentence contains a thought

 

From a lurker. 

Will someone define the word/term/concept of “sentence” please?

Christine Gray

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edward Vavra
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 1:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Each sentence contains a thought

 

    I agree with what Johanna and many others have said in this thread. I'd also suggest that the traditional "subject and predicate" derives from the philosophical "predication." It seems, however, that philosophical predications, in and of themselves, are beyond the zone of proximal development of most primary school students. On the other hand, "predication" as a logical concept, could probably be taught, perhaps as early as middle school — if the students have a firm grasp of subjects, finite verbs, and clauses.

     As someone noted (forgive me for not being able to keep track of names), "thought" itself is a difficult concept to define. Thus, I'm happy to see the agreement that defining a sentence, or even a clause as a "complete thought" is not at all helpful for students. I'm hoping more members of this list will become more interested in the questions of natural syntactic development, especially in grades three through seven. Although I myself still need to explore many more examples, third graders often add modifiers as separate sentences (predications). Thus

 

I live in a big house. It is on a hll.

 

Kellogg Hunt argues, among other things, that a great deal of syntactic development in primary school is the result of reduction and embedding — "I live in a big house on a hill." Thus what appear to be (and may actually be) "predications" in primary school writing develop into modification in longer sentences. [Note, by the way, that the adverbial prepositional phrase in "It is on a hill" turns into an adjectival phrase in the longer version.] I'd also note that this development is related to the MIMC principle, and I'm wondering — if students are actually enabled to identify S/V/C patterns, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases, will they (the students) be able to understand, even in primary school, much more about sentence structure, style, and logic?

Ed

 

P.S. For Hunt's work, see:

especially  "Early Blooming and Late Blooming Syntactic Structures."



>>> [log in to unmask] 10/10/2005 7:38:12 PM >>>

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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