Lies Your Teacher Told You: You Can Have Sentences Without Verbs

Miscellaneous General
1

Although it has been harped into English speakers by the public school grammar Nazis, it is in fact not true that you can not have a sentence without a verb. And I don’t mean a phrase, an inferred verb, or an incomplete sentence. Such sentences, called ‘nominal sentences’ exist in English as well as Bahasa (spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia) as well as ancient Hittite.

If you look into discussion on it online you will see people endlessly parroting this pseudo-fact, that you can’t have a sentence without a verb; despite the fact that it is obviously false if you actually study languages in use.

The ‘absent verb’ is the to-be or ontic verb; however though this can be grammatically declared a verb is logical content is not active but a metaphysical qualifier. So, still, it has no real verb.

The more, the merrier.

2

Also in Greek and Latin (‘ontic’ - from the participle of the Greek verb ‘to be’). Probably in most (all?) heavily inflected IE languages. Test: no verbs.

3

Many languages, such as Arabic, don’t even have ‘to be’ because it’s not a real verb. This puzzles us, but the existence of our ‘is’ and its use as a verb is just for sentential regularity; it’s neither required nor a verb in any kind of logical sense.

Favorite tactic: find something they declare ungrammatical in English, then find where Shakespeare or Milton do it.

Yoda-English is also perfectly allowable; if you keep the sentence particles together the word order is irrelevant. It was even more loosy-goosy in Old Norse; where inflection gave you indications - you could arrange words in almost any order you like in Old Norse and still be understood.

4

I haven’t studied linguistics much, but I took 5 years of Latin and I can definitely say there are many sentences where the verb isn’t there. The various forms of “esse” (to be) are left out all the time for instance. Word order also didn’t matter in Latin thanks to inflection.

5

Thing of our parodical ‘cave man’ speech, “Ug tall!” It sounds funny to us, but it also makes perfect sense.

6

Arabic does have ‘to be’. But just not in the same way as English.

It has akoon اكون in present. sakoon ساكون in future. And kana كان in past. to be, will be, and was, respectively.

What people mean is that you can say I am Ricky by saying ‘Ana Ricky’. Without any verb (I/me Ricky). But if you say ‘I want to be Ricky’. You have to use the verb for ‘to be’. Urid an akoon Ricky أريد ان أكون ريكي. What this means is that there is no copula in Arabic (same in Hebrew). Unless you count the occassions in Hebrew or Arabic when pronouns are used as unofficial copulas. Which is the semitic equivalent of this phenomenon, to many linguists.

ריקי הוא אנרכיסטRicky (he is) an anarchist. The same as Ricky is an anarchist. Roughly, Ricky hu anarkist.

ريكي هو ميزسي Ricky (he is) a Misesian. The same as Ricky is a Misesian. Transliteration: Ricky hua Mizesi.

But the verb ‘to be’ is there. Which might mean that a verb is more universal than copula (what links subject and predicate). When you think of ‘to be’ in this way, it seems more unavoidable. You must see them as three tenses to understand the verb. And a variation of a single mental idea of being. It’s not even about the verb existing, but some mental idea being represented arbitrarily by a sign. And the idea exists and the sign exists. Ergo, the verb exists.

The rules people usually say about English or maybe all languages are that:

All sentences will have some either explicit or implicit subject and predicate.

And all languages have some categories like a verb.

Obviously you can point to sentences like “No!” or “What?” as complete sentences without verbs. You don’t need Shakespeare or funky phrases. (You also have to be careful not to compare apples and oranges; or specific rules to general ones. Or language to language. You must speak about the same thing, ceterus peribus).

What linguists would do is say that these are short for longer sentences, complete with subjects and predicates. Which we also store mentally but we can remove some of it because it is still understandable. The same way we often delete things like relative pronouns (I told her she was fat/I told her that she was fat).

“No you cannot do [something]!” or “What did you say?” In this case, there are no sentences where you can avoid filling in subject and predicate somehow if you so wished. There is no way to shorten a sentence so much that it is not shorthand for something more complete.

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7

here is another problem.

As in Kant, languages can be ‘analytical’ and ‘synthetic’. (But with an unrelated meaning to Kant).

You can get away with loose word order and less total words in synthetic languages. But cannot do this in analytical languages.

So ancient Greek, which was synthetic, ‘to be’ ἐστί(ν) will be used some times (this verb is different depending on grammatical person). But not always. Because you know when adjectives/verbs go with the subject, object, or whatever, regardless of where it is in the sentence (reading some Ancient Greek sentences can give you a headache at first, like someone just threw random words on to a piece of paper and chose at random). Sometimes the ἐστί(ν) doesn’t go between what it links but afterwards. But you aren’t using less words, but more. Because you have to remember endings to words. And those endings carry the same meaning regardless. Latin is also in this category. (It has nothing to do with Indo European. Some Indo-European are synthetic, others analytic. Even latin-based languages are not like Latin structurally, necessarily. Like Modern English, tamed by French, is nothing like the more Germanic-y Old English, for the most part).

But English is analytical. So that is why it always using the copula to link subject and predicate, I think. In Greek you could have a subject and an adjective with a proper ending to tell you it was modifying the subject. And this suffices to link subject and predicate. Not so in English which relies on word order and lots of words, instead of endings.

It is a trade off that languages must make. Apparently, Navajo dispenses with many categories in favor of huge words.

plate (n)

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8

Following Steven Pinker, I eschew all normative grammatical rules. There is no such thing as normative grammar, only descriptive grammar.

That said, there is such a thing as good style and form in language, the same as in any art. The principles of good form are well worth learning. However, the principles of good form should never get in the way of expression. Probably the most crippling “rule” of grammar for me is the “rule” against ending a sentence with a preposition. Even if the origin of the rule were not completely boneheaded, it’s the way people speak and there’s nothing aesthetically unpleasing about ending a written sentence with a preposition. Any normative grammatical “rule” which violates actual usage should be politely set aside. Individual, contextual judgment is always a higher court of appeal than any general principle of style or form. Read some dialogue from a good movie script. What rules of grammar??

The dictionary still doesn’t have an entry for “y’all”. It’s a word by any measure.

Clayton -

9

Languages with rules die out.

10

Really, language is like a game.

In terms of telling people how to play it, there are two things. You can give them the rules: for instance, to differentiate it between other games or to say what your typical player does and how he does it (player as metaphor for linguistic unit, rather than speaker). Or you can tell them how to play like your favorite player. There is obviously an importance in knowing German is different English. There is an importance in knowing where German verbs go and where they can’t (as in the rule of the second German verb going at the end of a sentence). And this is different than saying that one must write like Thomas Mann or Goethe.

It might be two separate things. And description might be part of this telling how. So it is not mutually exclusive to prescription. Then you have to deal with the problem of something merely being read vs. it being always true. Are you always ‘describing’ something empirical. But there is more to language than the empirical or yet spoken. Like there is more to football than what has been played thus far, or else it could not be played at all to begin with. It will be played in the future (barring lockout).

A lot of Pinker’s focus on universal grammar and ‘language instinct’ revolves around rules. But that people instinctually pick out the rules necessary to their own language and block out the other unnecessary ones to make themselves more efficient language users on acquiring their first language. Language competence then is knowing a language. And being able to be a stickler about some rule is part of having a grasp of the language. The only problem for grammar nazis, is that this not cart blanche to force anything. Since people should already know many things as a prerequisite to even be taught. Since you must rely such information only through language.

Mr. Mises

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11

Following Steven Pinker, I eschew all normative grammatical rules. There is no such thing as normative grammar, only descriptive grammar.

I agree, what I mean by ‘allowed’ is comprehensible in a non-arbitrary way to an appropriately educated English speaker. Obviously people can understand both ‘the more, the merrier’ and ‘I strong’, even if the latter sounds a little funny to us. Likewise, Yoda-speech is perfectly comprehensible if you keep the sentence particles together. If you start taking the sentence particles apart, however, it becomes confusing because English lacks inflection and suffix/prefix structures or word forms that allow people to differentiate in the same way you can in Latin or Norse.