Once we successfully define "sentence," we can take on the harder task of defining "word." Dick Veit On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > Hey folks – > > Weeks ago, we had an exchange on the definition of a sentence as “a > complete thought,” and Beth asked if anyone had ever mentioned a source for > that definition. I thought I remembered a good discussion of it somewhere, > but I couldn’t recall exactly where. But now, I’m **supposed** to be > working on program review documents (complete with mission statements), so > of course I’ve suddenly remembered the reference I was looking for (and have > thus provided perhaps the only extant example of a mission statement > accomplishing anything useful). > > It’s Ian Michaels’s excellent _*English Grammatical Categories*_ (it > focuses on English, as the title suggests, but he gives a detailed > historical background dealing with the grammatical traditions that > Renaissance England inherited). I’m doubtless oversimplifying the > description Michaels provides (pp. 38-42), but in general the idea that “a > sentence expresses a complete thought” appears to be one *interpretation*of a statement made by Dionysius Thrax, a Greek grammarian who died around > 90 b.c.e. The idea was picked up by Priscian, a sixth-century Latin > grammarian whose text was one of the core books used throughout the middle > ages in Church schools (and in Europe, those were the only kind, really). > With Thrax and even Priscian, though, “complete” can be construed as > referring to whether a group of words accomplishes the speaker’s purpose, > rather than whether it conforms to the more grammatically-based notion > assumed in the modern definition of sentence. Medieval and Renaissance > grammarians used several terms for groups of words – ‘oratio,’ ‘sententia’ > –but none of these conformed strictly to those constructions that we’d call > sentences, and no others. In some cases, ‘sententia’ could be roughly > equivalent to ‘statement’. > > I’ll venture a conjecture, which should not be taken as reflecting the > views of Michaels (he doesn’t discuss developments post-1800): We developed > a specialized sense of “the sentence” that both shaped and was shaped by > punctuation patterns, and was keyed to the idea of a sentence being a full > statement (a subordinate clause, by itself, has no truth value). But we kept > using a translation of Priscian’s definition because….that had “always” been > the definition (sorry, Brad). And under one interpretation of Priscian’s > definition, intentional fragments would be sentences. > > Bill Spruiell > > Dept. of English > > Central Michigan University > 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/