* In fact, the word 'ellipsis' is often used for when a word or words are left out *cough* by ignorance or accident. The meaning of life probably takes a lifetime of reading and writing to communicate. A complex lesson might take a whole story. In the end, single sentences, and whole stories, come from the same place: a meaning, that you need to communicate to others. As a tool for constructing proper syntax, grammar is as much a disaster as trying to construct a heroic fantasy by slavishly building a hero's journey. In fairness, this is mostly because grammar as a tool for describing language is sometimes not quite up to the task. In modern English, meaning trumps grammar. Not to seek or distract attention, but just because we don't always need them. In modern English we can, and frequently, manage without verbs. When I exclaim "nonsense!" I'm thinking "nonsense!" not " that is nonsense!". The ideas that become words somewhere between my thoughts and my fingertips are limited to the core meaning that I want to convey. A grammarian would say that I elided "it does" - not just the verb, but the subject too.īut calling it "ellipsis" suggests that I'm thinking those words, just not saying or writing them. But notice that I just wrote "not always" as a complete sentence, which it was. In Latin the verb is so important that for preference, it is placed at the very end of the sentence, as if to ensure that you have an opportunity to give a fair hearing to all the other words before the verb takes over.Įnglish can function without verbs. In Latin, an entire sentence can be contained in a single verb.
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