Can a sentence have no verb except in what would otherwise be its noun phrase?
Can a sentence have no verb except in what would otherwise be its noun phrase?
e.g.
- The car in the street I walk down.
I'm guessing that "the street I walk down" would be the noun phrase, and it contains a verb (walk). So I wondered whether that's sufficient for a sentence. I'm guessing not.
I think I mean (tortuously)
- I walk down the street the car is in.
What if the elided verb is more obvious?
- The bird in the air I breath.
That seems to be the case here (birds always seem to fly in the air)
- I breath the air the bird flies in.
So I think I'm asking about
- verb ellipsis (the car [is] in), and
- whether I can put objects first, both before its subject and verb (OBJECT I walk down), and
- so that the object with an elided verb is before its subject (the car in SUBJECT).
3 could be an example of
poetic hyperbaton "Answer gave he none", and "What say You?"
2 could be an example of an elided 'but'
OSV... as a contrast with the conjunction but: "Rome I shall see!" and "Oranges I may hate; (but)* Apples I shall eat!".
I'm not sure these can be used together, or when verb ellipsis is reasonable.
In summary, are "The bird in the air I breath" or "I breath the air the bird in" complete sentences, and might either say the same as "I breath the air the bird flies in"?
Solution 1:
Neither The bird in the air I breathe nor I breathe the air the bird in is a complete sentence.
The bird in the air I breathe is a postmodified noun phrase which cannot stand alone as a sentence. It can function as the subject of a sentence, for example:
- The bird in the air I breathe is a bluejay
or as the object:
- My sister likes the bird in the air I breathe.
The example sentences sound odd because the words the bird in the air I breathe are unlikely in any sensible context I can think of. But they are now complete sentences with a subject in italics and a predicate (verb) in bold.
I breathe the air the bird in is not a correct sentence. It contains a subject I, and predicate verb breathe together with an object the air. The object is postmodified by a finite restrictive relative clause (reduced by omitting the relative pronoun that/which). But since each finite clause must have a verb, and the verb is missing here, the 'sentence' is ungrammatical.
An example of a corrected version of the relative clause (adding the missing verb) is:
- I breathe the air the bird flies in.