Nominal sentence

The term nominal sentence can refer to two different phenomena:

• a sentence with a predicate consisting of the copula to be plus a predicative, like Bob is a postman.^[1]
• a sentence with a predicate lacking a finite verb, like The more – the merrier. Usually, the missing verb is understood to be a form of to be, as seen in colloquial English: You from out of town? (see Zero copula).^[1][2][3][4]

Examples of sentences lacking a finite verb

While nominal sentences are rare in English, they are far more common in certain other languages:

• Russian: Вот человек, потерявший надежду. "Here is a man who has lost hope", literally "Here a man who has lost hope"
• Arabic: هذا الكاتبُ مشهورٌ (hāḏā 'l-kātibu mašhūrun) "This writer is famous", literally "This writer famous"
• Hebrew: המלך ערום (ha-melex 'erom) "The king [is] naked"

Nominal sentences were also common in the old Indo-European languages:^[4]

• Ancient Greek: ἐμοὶ δ'ἄχος (emoì d'áchos) "and to me [there is] pain"
• Latin: ūna salūs victīs "one salvation [is/remains] for the conquered"
• Old Persian: manā pitā Vištāspa "my father [is] Vištāspa"
• Tocharian A: tsraṣiñ waste wrasaśśi "the strong [are] the protection of the creatures"

Nominal sentences are common in American newspaper headlines:

• "First Animal Cloned"

And in English play-by-play sports announcing:

• "The batter 0 for 6 against Matthews this year."

See also

• Nominal sentences in the Arabic language
• Phrase

References

1. ^ ^{a b} (in German) Duden. Deutsches Universalwörterbuch, Mannheim/Leipzig/Wien/Zürich: Dudenverlag, 2007, ISBN 3-411-05506-5 
2. ^ Bußmann, Hadumod (2002) (in German), Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft, Stuttgart: Kröner, ISBN 3-520-45203-0 
3. ^ Glück, Helmut, ed. (2005) (in German), Metzler Lexikon Sprache, Stuttgart/Weimar: Kröner, ISBN 978-3-476-02056-7 
4. ^ ^{a b} Fortson, Benjamin W. (2004), Indo-European Language and Culture, Blackwell Publishing, p. 143, ISBN 1-4051-0316-7 

Further reading

• Benveniste, Émile, "La phrase nominale", Problèmes de linguistique générale 

This linguistics article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v · Categories: Sentences by type Linguistics stubs Wikimedia Foundation. 2010. Игры ⚽ Поможем решить контрольную работу Nominal party Nominal size Look at other dictionaries: nominal sentence — noun : an equational sentence * * * Gram. a sentence consisting of a subject and complement without a linking verb, as Very interesting, those books. [1920 25] …   Useful english dictionary nominal sentence — Gram. a sentence consisting of a subject and complement without a linking verb, as Very interesting, those books. [1920 25] * * * …   Universalium Nominal identity — is the identity in name only as opposed to the individual experience of that identity. The concept is often used in sociology, psychology and linguistics. Contents 1 Social sciences 1.1 Nominal identity in ethnicity 2 Linguistics …   Wikipedia Sentence element — Sentence elements are the groups of words that combine together to comprise the ‘building units’ of a well formed sentence. A sentence element approach to grammar assumes a top down methodology. In other words, it starts with the sentence as a… …   Wikipedia Nominal TAM — is the indication of tense–aspect–mood by inflecting a noun, rather than a verb. In clausal nominal TAM, the noun indicates TAM information about the clause. Whether or not a particular language can best be understood as having clausal nominal… …   Wikipedia Sentence (linguistics) — In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it.… …   Wikipedia Nominal group (functional grammar) — Those five beautiful shiny Jonathan apples sitting on the chair In systemic functional grammar (SFG), a nominal group is a group of words which expresses an entity. A nominal group is widely regarded as synonymous to noun phrase in other… …   Wikipedia Nominal aphasia — Anomic aphasia Classification and external resources Diffusion tensor imaging image of the brain showing the right and left arcuate fasciculus (Raf Laf). Also shown are the right and left superior longitudinal fasciculus (Rslf Lslf) …   Wikipedia nominal — 1. adjective /ˈnɒm.ɪnl̩/ a) Of, resembling, relating to, or consisting of a name or names. He gave me only a nominal sum for my services. b) Assigned to or bearing a persons name. The nominal voltage is 1.5 V, but the actual figure is usually… …   Wiktionary German sentence structure — is somewhat more complex than that of many other European languages, with phrases regularly inverted for both questions and subordinate phrases. Main Sentence If a verb has a separable prefix, this prefix is moved to the end of the sentence.: Ich …   Wikipedia 18+ © Academic, 2000-2024 Contact us: Technical Support, Advertising Dictionaries export, created on PHP, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, MODx. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet Share the article and excerpts Direct link … Do a right-click on the link above and select “Copy Link”