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 naked"
Nominal sentences were also common in the old Indo-European languages:
- Ancient Greek: ἐμοὶ δ'ἄχος (emoì d'áchos) "and to me pain"
- Latin: ūna salūs victīs "one salvation for the conquered"
- Old Persian: manā pitā Vištāspa "my father Vištāspa"
- Tocharian A: tsraṣiñ waste wrasaśśi "the strong 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."
Read more about this topic: Nominal Sentence
Famous quotes containing the words examples of, examples, sentences, lacking, finite and/or verb:
“It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people’s attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Memory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me.... Now, the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“All finite things reveal infinitude:”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
“The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)