On 30 April 2015 at 18:47, Kim Jones <kimjo...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> On 30 Apr 2015, at 2:29 pm, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I was told at school that 'a sentence which does not contain a verb is not
>> a sentence' which I gather was meant to imply 'you have not managed to say
>> anything if you don't use a verb' which is bollocks, of course.
>>
>> "This sentence no verb."
>
> Without a verb you have a hard time indicating how the object(s) in the
> sentence relate to each other. (Apart from interjective sentences like
> "Hello!", at least.)
>
> The still night.
>
This (and the other examples you mentioned) aren't sentences, but only
phrases. It would appear that our language is constructed on the assumption
that sentences - with a few exceptions - have to have a verb, namely some
relation has to be described (often, but not necessarily, temporal).
>
> So, without a verb you can still indicate and describe something as long
> as there is no change taking place. Existence, in these instances, is not
> invoked but assumed.
>
So long as there are no *relations* involved. These may or may not involve
change (within the sentence).
"I gave the spoon to mother" implies change, namely the spoon changed hands.
"She is my mother" doesn't imply change. Although it does imply a relation
(well two, if you'll pardon the pun)
>
> You can imply a verb's existence without actually using it:
>
> Me hungry.
>
> System shutdown in 60 seconds.
>
Well as you say, these have only moved the verb to being implicit. ("I am
hungry" and "The system will shut down in 60 seconds"). That doesn't make a
case for actual verbless sentences.
>
> It was sci-fi man Robert Anton Wilson (friend of Bob Heinlein) who tried
> to get rid of the "is" in his writing and public speaking. Invoking QM, he
> argued you cannot know what anything is anyway, so give up the pretense and
> bite the bullet. You have to lose the "is" in your communicating. You may
> have heard of "E-Prime" or English without the verb "to be." Worth the Wiki
> article if not. Bob tried valiantly to use E-Prime in his later
> philosophical books.
>
Yes, I like RAW, at least his earlier works. (He seemed to get a bit too
envangelistic later, along the lines of "can't these stupid people see that
they can metaprogramme their brains?")
I quoted part of his "Ten reasons to get up in the morning" the other day
on another forum. It's rather moving.
Mind you I wouldn't disrespect him by saying he was a "sci-fi man" - he
definitely wrote science fiction, not skiffy - amongst lots of other
things, of course.
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