Verbless clauses are comprised, semantically, of a

predicand In semantics, a predicand is an argument in an utterance, specifically that of which something is predicated. By extension, in syntax, it is the constituent in a clause typically functioning as the subject. Examples In the most typical cases ...

, expressed or not, and a verbless predicate. For example, the underlined string in 'With the children so sick,''''we've been at home a lot'' means the same thing as the clause ''the children are so sick''. It attributes the predicate "so sick" to the predicand "the children". In most contexts, *''the children so sick'' would be ungrammatical.

History of the concept

In the early days of

generative grammar Generative grammar is a research tradition in linguistics that aims to explain the cognitive basis of language by formulating and testing explicit models of humans' subconscious grammatical knowledge. Generative linguists, or generativists (), ...

, new conceptions of the clause were emerging.

Paul Postal Paul Martin Postal (born November 10, 1936, in Weehawken, New Jersey) is an American linguist. Biography Postal received his PhD from Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New ...

and

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

argued that every

verb phrase In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntax, syntactic unit composed of a verb and its argument (linguistics), arguments except the subject (grammar), subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quic ...

had a subject, even if none was expressed, (though

Joan Bresnan Joan Wanda Bresnan FBA (born August 22, 1945) is Sadie Dernham Patek Professor in Humanities Emerita at Stanford University. She is best known as one of the architects (with Ronald Kaplan) of the theoretical framework of lexical functional gram ...

and Michael Brame disagreed). As a result, every VP was thought to

head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple ani ...

a clause. The idea of verbless clauses was perhaps introduced by James McCawley in the early 1980s with examples like the underlined part of ''with John in jail''... meaning "John is in jail".

Examples

English

Modern English Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England England is a Count ...

, verbless clauses are common as the complement of ''with'' or ''without''. Other

prepositions Adpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositions (which precede their complemen ...

such as ''although'', ''once'', ''when'', and ''while'' also take verbless clause complements, such as ''Although no longer a student, she still dreamed of the school,'' in which the predicand corresponds to the subject of the main clause, ''she''. Supplements, too can be verbless clauses, as in ''Many people came, some of them children'' or ''Break over, they returned to work.'' Neither ''

A comprehensive grammar of the English language ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'' is a descriptive grammar of English written by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. It was first published by Longman in 1985. In 1991, it was called "The g ...

'' nor''

The Cambridge grammar of the English language ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CamGEL''The abbreviation ''CamGEL'' is less commonly used for the work than is ''CGEL'' (and the authors themselves use ''CGEL'' in their other works), but ''CGEL'' is ambiguous because it has ...

'' offer any speculations about the structure(s) of such clauses. The latter says, without hedging, "the head of a clause (the predicate) is realised by a VP." It's not clear how such a statement could be compatible with the existence of verbless clauses.

Gurindji Kriol language

Ascriptive clauses consist of a subject noun and nominalised adjective. Existential clauses contain a subject with locative phrase. Possessive constructions consist of a nominal acting as a predicates, taking another nominal argument. In these clauses the head is marked dative. Inalienable nominals (body parts and kinship) are only optionally marked dative.Meakins and O'Shannessy 2005

Jingulu language

In Jingulu language, predicates in verbless clauses can be adjectives or nouns, possessors, adpositionals, or adverbs. Verbless clause example:

Merei-Tiale language

In Merei-Tiale language, there are verbless equative clauses. {, class="wikitable" , ''I'' , ''nie'' , ''motei'' , ''na'' , ''tija'' , - , A:P , 3 , IRR.3.NEG , A:C , teacher , - , colspan="5" , 'He is not a teacher'{{Rp, 37

Modern Scots

Modern Scots Modern Scots comprises the varieties of Scots traditionally spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, from 1700. Throughout its history, Modern Scots has been undergoing a process of language attrition, whereby successive generations ...

, examples are seen in relative clauses. ''She haed tae walk the hale lenth o the road an her seiven month pregnant'' "She had to walk the whole length of the road—and she seven months pregnant". ''He telt me tae rin an me wi ma sair leg'' "He told me to run—''and me with my sore leg''".

Shilha language

Shilha language has examples like the following: : ''darnɣ argan ar inkkr ɣ tagant'' (with.us EL-argan it.is.growing in EA-forest) "we have an argan tree growing in the forest" : ''is ur dark kra yaḍnin?'' (question not with.you something other) "don't you have something different?"

References

Syntax Semantics