"Please" or "Sorry" as Sentences [duplicate]

Is please, or, sorry, a sentence?

Solution 1:

Consider the following text:

Person A: Sorry. I can't help you.

Person B: Please!

In this dialog the words sorry and please are considered orthographical sentences since they begin with a capital letter and finish with end punctuation (period/full stop, question mark, exclamation mark.)

So every string of words starting with a capitalised word and concluding with end punctuation is an orthographical sentence.

But are Sorry. and Please! grammatical sentences? Based on the traditional notional definition of a sentence as a complete thought then the answer must be yes. But the concept of a complete thought is now considered to be too vague to be useful.

An alternative definition of a grammatical sentence is that it has a subject and a predicate (i.e. it consists of at least one, independent, clause). For example:

I can't help you (subject: I, predicate: can't help you).

But even here there is a problem, since the words Help me! have no (explicit) subject, yet are considered to be a grammatical sentence.

In summary, there is no simple answer to the question Is '(string of words)' a sentence? A good overview of the issue can be found on ThoughtCo: Sentence Definition and Examples in English Grammar