Читать книгу Collins Good Grammar - Graham King - Страница 12

Here are some constructions that aren’t regarded as ‘proper’ sentences:

Are unable to fill any order within 21 days.

Date for the closing of.

Thinking it an excellent opportunity.

Clearly, there’s something wrong with these. What is wrong is that these examples do not make sense. Nor are they in any context that would help them to make sense. They are incomplete because they are ungrammatical and do not express a thought or an action or carry any recognisable information. It has nothing to do with length, either; the following examples are extremely short but are grammatical and convey the intended information in such a way as to be unambiguous:

‘Taxi!’ ONE WAY Stop! Amount Due ‘Damn!’

‘Leaving already?’

Sentences are so versatile they can be confusing, so this might be a good time to take a closer look at the inner workings of the sentence. Despite the demonstration that even single-word ‘sentences’ can make sense, let’s concentrate on what we might call a ‘classic’ sentence.