Perhaps your final research paper in English Composition is not the place to experiment - or, then again, maybe it is. These are grammatical structures that cannot stand on their own: they need to be connected to an independent clause to work in writing. We talked about phrases and clauses a bit in Text: Parts of a Sentence. In a New York minute.Īs long as you are clearly in control of the situation, this is permissible, but the freedom to exercise this stylistic license depends on the circumstances. Fragments are simply grammatically incomplete sentencesthey are phrases and dependent clauses. Harrison Ford has said he would be more than willing to take on another Indiana Jones project. There are occasions when a sentence fragment can be stylistically effective, exactly what you want and no more. the more powerful speaker, he lost the case because he didn't understand the jury. We need an independent clause to follow up this dependent clause. This sentence fragment has a subject, he, and two verbs, had and was, but it cannot stand by itself because of the dependent word (subordinating conjunction) even though. It may even have a subject-verb relationship, but it has been subordinated to another idea by a dependent word and so cannot stand by itself: Even though he had the better arguments and was by far the more powerful speaker. And made a convincing presentation of her ideas about the new product in this example is not a complete sentence. And made a convincing presentation of her ideas about the new product. Ivana appeared at the committee meeting last week. Remember that an -ing verb form without an auxiliary form to accompany it can never be a verb. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples: Example 1. It may have most of the makings of a sentence but still be missing an important part of a verb string: Some of the students working in Professor Espinoza's laboratory last semester. It describes something, but there is no subject-verb relationship: Working far into the night in an effort to salvage her little boat.This is a verbal phrase that wants to modify something, the real subject of the sentence (about to come up), probably the she who was working so hard. This sentence accomplishes a great deal in terms of placing the reader in time and place, but there is no subject, no verb. Subordinating conjunctions (e.g., if, since, because. It may locate something in time and place with a prepositional phrase or a series of such phrases, but it's still lacking a proper subject-verb relationship within an independent clause: In Japan, during the last war and just before the armistice. Predicates that are contained within dependent clauses cannot be used as the main verb in a sentence. There are several reasons why a group of words may seem to act like a sentence but not have the wherewithal to make it as a complete thought. It does not contain even one independent clause. If your computer is equipped with PowerPoint, click on the PowerPoint icon to the right for a brief PowerPoint presentation on Sentence Fragments.Ī SENTENCE FRAGMENT fails to be a sentence in the sense that it cannot stand by itself.
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