![]() We now know what occurred during the time specified by "During the night". Now that we have looked at these sentences as fragments, let's take a look at how they would look completed *A subordinate clause almost always will begin with a prepositional phrase (e.g., "even though", "despite", "although") This fragment actually contains a subject-verb relationship (he worked), but the phrase "even though" makes it clear that this is a subordinate clause*, and therefore it needs another clause to complete the sentence. ![]() Remember, for an -ing verb to be an action, it must be immediately preceded by another verb (e.g., we are working). This clause identifies a subject, but doesn't explain what the subject is doing. Notice that this clause locates something in time/space, but doesn't tell us what is happening. Typically, a fragment lacks a subject-verb relationship.įor example, these are a few sentence fragments: The land of spices something understood.A sentence fragment occurs when a sentence is missing one of the key parts necessary for it to be a complete sentence. Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,Ĭhurch-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, The six-days world transposing in an hour,Ī kind of tune, which all things hear and fear Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earthĮngine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, God's breath in man returning to his birth, Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, Scesis Onomaton in George Herbert's Sonnet "Prayer".(Arthur Quinn and Lyon Rathburn, "Scesis Onomaton." Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, ed. As Peacham's example demonstrates, scesis onomaton can string together phrases to form an accumulatio. "Henry Peacham both defined and exemplified scesis onomaton: 'When a sentence or saying doth consiste altogether of nouns, yet when to every substantive an adjective is joined, thus: A man faithful in friendship, prudent in counsels, virtuous in conversation, gentle in communication, learned in all learned sciences, eloquent in utterance, comely in gesture, pitiful to the poor, an enemy to naughtiness, a lover of all virtue and goodliness' ( The Garden of Eloquence). Fowler and Ernest Gowers, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd ed. Used sparingly and with discrimination, the device can no doubt be an effective medium of emphasis, intimacy, and rhetoric." ![]() It must be judged by its success in affecting the reader in the way the writer intended. That grammarians might deny it the right to be called a sentence has nothing to do with its merits. "Since the verbless sentence is freely employed by some good writers (as well as extravagantly by many less good ones) it must be classed as modern English usage. What is new is its vogue with English journalists and other writers. "The verbless sentence is a device for enlivening the written word by approximating it to the spoken. "A grammarian might say that a verbless sentence was a contradiction in terms but, for the purpose of this article, the definition of a sentence is that which the OED calls 'in popular use often, such a portion of a composition or utterance as extends from one full stop to another.' 'I sure hope the market improves.' 'It better.' In fact, it had better might seem excessively formal in such an exchange." " It better as a verbless sentence seems to have won a place in correct, if informal, speech.(Ernest Hemingway, The Toronto Star, 1923 By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, ed. At the cafe tables, men huddled, their coat collars turned up, while they finger glasses of grog Americain and the newsboys shout the evening papers." Paris with the big charcoal braziers outside the cafes, glowing red. (Elizabeth Bishop, "In the Village." The New Yorker, December 19, 1953) Handkerchiefs with narrow black hems-'morning handkerchiefs.' In bright sunlight, over breakfast tables, they flutter." A silver-framed photograph, quickly turned over. Another bag of silver mesh, gathered to a tight, round neck of strips of silver that will open out, like the hatrack in the front hall. A silver calling-card case on a little chain. Black shoes with buckles glistening like the dust in the blacksmith's shop. A welter of foul-smelling feathers and coyote-scattered carrion which was all that remained of somebody's dream of a chicken ranch." "Smashed wheels of wagons and buggies, tangles of rusty barbed wire, the collapsed perambulator that the French wife of one of the town's doctors had once pushed proudly up the planked sidewalks and along the ditchbank paths.(Alfred Jingle in The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, 1837) "Waiter! raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye-nothing like raw beefsteak for a bruise, sir cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient.".(The Doctor in "Blink," Doctor Who, 2007) "Fascinating race, the Weeping Angels.".
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