Re: Cecil’s column Is “I am” the shortest English sentence?
Cecil doesn’t bother to rebut this objection. He should have.
Actually, “Go.” is too a perfectly complete English sentence. Yes, an English sentence needs a subject. And yes, it’s only implied here. But that’s good enough. That’s how we make second-person imperative sentences in English.
Yes, a sentence consisting of only an imperative verb is perfectly valid. I think this was a light-hearted answer ripped from a longer column with several questions.
Yes, but at only two letters, “Go.” may very well be the shortest sentence you can construct in English.
O?
Not a verb.
So, not a sentence?
Ummm, he certainly does rebut the objection, with his next “shortest sentence”: “I.” [with an implied “do.”]
This column was not meant as a grammar text, but as a light-hearted refutation of the notion that “I am” is the shortest English sentence.
Right. The problem is, what is a sentence? Some would want a sentence to include a a subject and a verb, but others would define a sentence as a grammatically correct set of words between two full stops (or exclamation marks or question marks). Since a sentence on the second definition can be just one word, the shortest possible sentence can be just one letter, e.g.,
“What is the last letter in the alphabet?”
“Z.”
In context, “Z.” is a complete statement, so it’s a one-letter sentence.
I would say that by their very nature imperatives DON’T imply a subject, in the sense that the action of the verb isn’t necessarily realized. I may say to you, “Go,” but that doesn’t mean that you actually will go anywhere. As a different mood, it’s an entirely different animal, and to worry about whether it “has a subject” or not is missing the point.
From a computational-linguistic view, the (finite) verb is the kernel (the predicate) of a sentence. No verb, no sentence. A verb also comes with some slots (vacancies) that need to be filled with a subject or object to make the sentence grammatical. That number may however be zero, as in some imperative forms.
None of this is limited to English by the way, as the concepts of verbs, subjects, and objects are one of the few things that all known natural languages have in common.
But just because all languages have verbs, that does not mean that all sentences must contain verbs. In English, where is the verb in “The more the merrier”? Or is that not an English sentence?
Not a sentence. Imagine someone hearing that phrase for the first time. While inferring its meaning, he will most likely mentally insert a finite form of “be” somewhere between the words. Whereas in “Go!” nothing can be inserted.
Just to show that I’m not alone in my understanding, I’ll quote an example from the Wikipedia article on Sentence (linguistics):
None of those three sentences contains a finite verb, and the first is just “London.” I’m not even sure what verb you’d add to “London” to complete the thought contained there.
Grammar is not what your elementary school English teacher taught you.
Real English grammar is described in 880-page books of small print with millions of examples to parse out all the exceptions. Those are required because grammar is not a set of rules; it is descriptions of what the language does in all the myriad situations and contortions that native speakers and writers put it through.
A sentence is whatever is understandable to a native speaker as a sentence. The only real question that presents is whether a single word is a sentence or a sentence fragment, since a sentence fragment is still often understandable. Some grammarians would like to restrict sentences to those word collections that show a relationship between the words (like subject and object, although that is not the only possibility.)
This page has a number of quotes that grapple with the concept of a sentence, and they’re worth reading. Most imply that two or more words are necessary, but not all.
Bottom line is that there are schools of thought on whether a sentence can be one word, and that means no absolute answer is possible.
O.K.
No it isn’t. It’s a sentence fragment.
And, don’t you go around starting sentences with the word because, young man, or I’ll make sure it goes on your permanent record.
This instruction does not work. How would a word or paragraph or book or library not meet this definition just a well as a sentence does?
“No.” can be a sentence.
You’d probably need to look at the original for context. A reasonable reading, however, would interpret “punctuated” as being a sentence-ending punctuation like a period, question or exclamation point. So that would eliminate paragraphs, books, and libraries. It would also eliminate the number “4” in an arithmetic test answer and similar responses like telephone numbers or addresses.
One of the things I hated most in school was a teacher asking for a definition and then nitpicking it to death to show that any short answer could have holes or exceptions. That’s true. But long answers also have their own set of holes. You can dispute any definition of anything if you try hard enough or be sufficiently nitpicky and pedantic. The point the Rothsteins make is that under certain circumstances a single word can meet the definitions of a sentence. That contributes to the discussion here.
Bullshit!
It’s not nitpicking at all. If the definition relies on a specialized sense of the word “punctuated” I need to know what that is or I can’t be blamed for interpreting a word the way it is usually used.