Ed,
   I'm still not sure whether a fragment is a sub-category of sentence or
not. With my students, I use the term "disparaged type" for both
fragments and run-ons. I suspect the writers in question used them
quite effectively, that they were not just careless choices. If you
think of the sentence as a message unit, then isolating a fragment can
slow the reader down. Add emphasis. There are functional reasons for
it.
   Elliptical constructions create definition problems for sure because
their completeness depends on context. "Do first year students miss
home? Most will."

Craig>

Craig,
>
> Anyone who uses that second "definition" will be calling one heck of a
> lot of fragments sentences.  In my research of all the essays
> published in "Best American Essays" of 2001 and 2003, I found that
> about ten percent of all units that began with a capital letter and
> ended with a period were fragments.  And I did NOT count and dialog,
> any imperatives, or any "verb understood" constructions  (e.g., "He
> would if he could.")  Had I counted these, the number of fragments
> would have been considerably higher.  As I recall, of the 50 or so
> authors represented, only four did not use fragments.
>
> Ed S
>
> On Sep 21, 2009, at 1:02 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>
>>   I'm working on a project that starts with a critique of current
>> (school based) descriptions and definitions of the sentence, but it
>> occurs to me that I may be unaware of practices in other parts of
>> the country.
>>  The most prevalent definition I run into from students starting
>> college in New York state is "a sentence is a group of words that
>> expresses a complete thought". This is echoed in "Writing Talk", 5th
>> edition, 2009, Winkler and McCuen-Metherell, (just sent me by a
>> publisher, so I'm using it as a representative text for college
>> level) who follow that up with "This completeness is what your
>> speaker's ear uses to recognize a sentence" (p. 49), which fairly
>> nicely frames the approach--not a full description of the sentence,
>> but an attempt to awaken the student writers' intuitive feel for
>> minimally necessary forms.
>>  The other definition/description I get is that "a sentence is a
>> group of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a
>> period, question mark, or exclamation point", which would seem to
>> grant the writer discretion in deciding what constitutes a sentence
>> (complete thought or not.)
>>   The point I'm trying to make (at least at the start) is that these
>> approaches have limited utility and may be deeply misleading for
>> anyone hoping to push toward a deeper understanding.
>>  But am I missing something? Are any of you aware of school based
>> approaches that take a different tack?
>>
>> Craig
>>
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