Nominal sentence (also known as equational sentence) is a
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
term that refers to a nonverbal sentence (i.e. a sentence without a
finite verb
Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be ''fin ...
).
As a nominal sentence does not have a verbal
predicate
Predicate or predication may refer to:
* Predicate (grammar), in linguistics
* Predication (philosophy)
* several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic:
**Predicate (mathematical logic)
**Propositional function
**Finitary relation, o ...
, it may contain a
nominal
Nominal may refer to:
Linguistics and grammar
* Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech
* Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement")
* Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb
* Nou ...
predicate, an
adjectival predicate, in Semitic languages also an
adverbial
In English grammar, an adverbial (abbreviated ) is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial clause or adverbial phrase) that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb. (The word ''adverbial'' itself is also used as a ...
predicate or even a
prepositional
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
predicate. In
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
ian-
Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
, however, as in the majority of
African languages
The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families:
* Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...
, sentences with adverbial or prepositional predicate show a distinctly different structure.
The relation of nominal sentences to verbal sentences is a question of tense marking. In most languages with nominal sentences such as
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
,
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
and
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
, the
copular verb
In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated ) is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word ''is'' in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase ''was not being'' i ...
does not surface in indicatival present tense sentences. Conversely, these languages allow the copular verb in non-present sentences.
History
Historically, nominal sentences have posited much controversy regarding their identity as an existent linguistic phenomenon. Ancient grammatical tradition did not uncover such sentences, or if they did, they were only found as an exception to the language structure. This was the view taken by the Western grammatical tradition, which began with an analysis of Ancient Greek followed by an analysis of Latin.
However, this Western/European approach to nominal sentences was not how the Arab grammarians of the early Middle Ages approached it. Arab grammarians did not feel as bound by the classical grammatical categories as did the European counterparts of that historical period. Rather, they viewed a sentence as having two basic categories: 1. a verbal sentence that begins with a verb, and 2. a nominal sentence that begins with a noun and may or may not have a verb within it.
Moving forward in the historical time period,
Orientalists
In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. In particular, Orientalist p ...
later borrowed the ''nominal sentence'' terminology from the early Arab grammarians, however modified it slightly to be defined solely with respect to the absence of the verbal predicate, rather than with respect to the first word of the sentence (the noun) that may or may not have a verb in it, as the Arab grammarians defined it. This slight shift in the definition of nominal sentences corresponds partly to both the Western and the Arabic grammar tradition. The Orientalists' definition agrees with the Western grammar's focus of the predicate orientation, and it supports how the Arab grammarians included a sentence category of nominal sentences (nonverbal sentences). Since this new definition of nominal sentences corresponded more accurately to the notion of ''non-verbal sentences'', compared to the Arab definition of it 'may or may not contain a verb', the Orientalists' definition included predicate types other than verbs (nouns, adjectives, etc.).
Syntactic structure and analyses
![Arabic I am happy tree structure](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Arabic_I_am_happy_tree_structure.jpg)
To successfully account for the syntactic structure of a nominal sentence, there must either be a change in the
phrase structure rules
Phrase structure rules are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language's syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957. They are used to break down a natural langu ...
or a
zero copula
Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship (like the copula "to be" in English). One can distinguish languages that simply do not have a copula and languages tha ...
must be assumed. This is because nominal sentences cannot be accounted for using traditional phrase structure rules, which state:
TP → (T) (
VP).
In other words, a
tense phrase
In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on Nominalization. In: R. Jacobs and P. Rosenbaum (eds.) ...
must consist of a
noun phrase
In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
or
complementizer phrase, an optional
tense head, and a
verb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quickly put the money into the box'', the words ''q ...
. Less technically, this means each sentence must have a noun and verb component. Because there is no overt verb in a nominal sentence, this creates a challenge for the theory.
Taking an Arabic sentence like (), literally "I happy", which is fully grammatical in the language, we see that there is a pronoun, and an adjective, . The first satisfies the sentence requirement of having a noun, but the latter being an adjective, our verb requirement remains unfulfilled. In order to allow this construction, we would have to revise our theory to state *TP → NP (the * indicates that this is actually an
ungrammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to form ...
construction), meaning you could have a sentence which breaks down to either a verb phrase or an adjective phrase
(see the above figure). However, phrase structure rules are supposed to be
universal
Universal is the adjective for universe.
Universal may also refer to:
Companies
* NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company
** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal
** Universal TV, a ...
, therefore this new rule would also allow us to generate "I happy" in English. Since this is not a grammatical, this is an issue that requires attention.
Another problem is that each phrase must consist of a
head which bears its name. Therefore, in a verb phrase, the head is always a verb.
Again, nominal sentences like do not have a verb, so the verb head position in the verb phrase cannot be filled.
Having a zero copula is one way to solve the problems listed above without compromising the existing syntactic theory. The verb is present, just covertly as "null".
![English and arabic i am happy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/English_and_arabic_i_am_happy.jpg)
Using
X-bar theory
In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on Nominalization. In: R. Jacobs and P. Rosenbaum (eds.) ...
, it is possible to both account for the grammaticality of constructions such as "I happy" as well as explain how the subject
DP is derived. In X-bar theory, there are no obligatory
lexical categories
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...
that make up a sentence; instead, there are only general X-bar rules: the specifier rule, adjunct rule, and complement rule. Therefore, the theory accurately permits the AP "happy" as grammatical even without a verb since AP can be a complement to the T head
(see aside).
Additionally, under the VP-internal subject hypothesis, the subject "I" will be generated in the specifier of VP and, using the DP movement, it will move to the specifier position of TP. Consequently, the resulting surface structure of the nominal sentence "I happy" is properly generated under this analysis.
In English
Nominal sentences in English are relatively uncommon, but may be found in
non-finite embedded clause
A subordinate clause, dependent clause, subclause, or embedded clause is a clause that is embedded within a complex sentence. For instance, in the English sentence "I know that Bette is a dolphin", the clause "that Bette is a dolphin" occurs as th ...
s such as the one in "I consider John intelligent", where ''to be'' is omitted from ''John to be intelligent''.
They can also be found in newspaper headlines, such as "Jones Winner" where the intended meaning is with the copular verb, "Jones is the Winner".
Other examples are proverbs ("More haste, less speed"); requests ("Scalpel!"); and statements of existence ("
Fire in the hole
"Fire in the hole" is an expression indicating that an explosive detonation in a confined space is imminent. It originated from American miners, who needed to warn their fellows that a charge had been set. The phrase appears in this sense in Ame ...
!"), which are often warnings.
The omission of the verb
'to be' can also provide basis for nominal sentences: for example, in the sentence "the higher I am, the hungrier I feel", the verb 'to be' can be omitted to form a nominal sentence thus: "The higher, the hungrier".
A sentence such as "What a great day today!" is, for example, considered nominal since there are no verbs.
In Arabic
Present tense
A
verbless sentence in Arabic ( ) does not consist of a subject but rather a topic followed by a predicate.
They are only possible in
present tense
The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...
sentences. Below are examples of verbless sentences with NP, AdjP or PP predicates.
;NP predicate
;AdjP predicate
;PP predicate
All the examples above are perfectly grammatical in Arabic since they all refer to the present tense and therefore do not require verbs.
Past tense
As stated above, verbless sentences occur only in the present tense thus, a formal nominal sentence in Arabic can never express something in the
past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...
. That is, the past feature has to always be indicated
morphologically to convey accurate information of (+past), unlike the present which can be referred to as tenseless.
The following is an example of a past tense sentence in formal or written Arabic:
Demonstrated by the sentence above is the idea that tense is a guiding factor to the use of nominal sentences in Arabic. A sentence in the past always requires the (+past) verb.
Negation
Nominal sentences can be negated in different ways depending on tense and whether or not they are embedded. The following is an example of a negative nominal sentence in the present tense, using the formal Arabic negative particle :
The negative particle () by itself has the meaning of a present tense and it is used to negate a general existence; so it means something along the lines of "there does not exist" or "there is not".
Thus, it can only negate a tenseless sentence where an overt copula is not necessary.
In order to negate a nominal sentence in the past, however, the copular verb must be included. The following is an example of a negative past sentence using the negative particle :
It is important to note that the negative particle () is a tense marker of (+past). Therefore, it negates a lexically present tense to refer to the past, making past negative sentences similar to the affirmative past tense sentences in that a past feature must be marked.
In other languages
Hungarian
For some languages, nominal sentences are restricted to third person only.
Hungarian is an example of such a language. In Hungarian, the copular verb simply expresses something that exists, such as something, someone, a place, or even time, weather, a material, an origin, a cause or purpose.
In third person proposition sentences (both singular and plural), there are no copular verbs required
and instead, the copular is null.
Russian
In Russian, there are no restrictions on verbless propositional sentences as they can occur with all persons and all numbers (i.e., singular or plural).
However, despite such restrictions and variability seen in both Arabic and Hungarian above, there are no structural differences between the languages.
Instead, these differences are derived by whether or not there must be a relation with the verbal constructions and the copular verb.
Hebrew
In Hebrew, sentences may or may not include verbs since verbs are optional and not at all obligatory. Also, the order of words is quite flexible such that for the sentences that do include verbs, the verb can appear either before or after the nominal predicate, adjectival predicate or prepositional predicate; the nominal predicate can appear either before or after the adjectival predicate, prepositional predicate; and so on, all of which are possible combinations that still mean the same thing. Although for the sentences that lack verbs, only two combinations are possible: either the nominal predicate appears before or after the adjectival/prepositional predicate. And like in Arabic, the copular verb is simply implied, in fact, there are no present tense forms of the verb "to be" in any stage of Hebrew, ancient or modern.
Ancient Indo-European languages
In ancient
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
, verb inflections and context both play a significant role in determining the structure of the sentence as well as their translations to other languages.
Verb inflections are used to indicate person (first, second or third), number (singular, dual or plural), tense, voice, and mood. Also, personal endings, which are suffixes that attach to verbs, are specifically used to express person and number and consist of nine different forms: alternating combinations between the three persons and three numbers.
Context determines whether the simple present and present progressive (for example, "I eat" vs. "I am eating") indicates the present or future tense. This is a common phenomenon found in English as well, since the sentence "I am eating in the cafeteria" can either mean "I am eating in the cafeteria
ight now or "I am eating in the cafeteria
ext Tuesday.
Additionally, the present tense can be used to talk about either the present or the past and which one it implies is determined by context. For instance, "We went to the mall
esterday James ''buys'' a new bike", where without the context (''yesterday'') the action of buying would take place in the present but in this very sentence, it occurs in the past.
Thus for the examples below, the omitted copular verb only acts and implies a connection between the subject and predicate. Due to the missing verbal inflections, only the suffixes that are attached to the nominal predicates can be used to determine such things as number and possession. As to what time the sentences are describing, it depends entirely on the context of when the sentences are being used and/ or the preceding and following sentences.
;
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
;
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
;
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...
;
Tocharian A
The Tocharian (sometimes ''Tokharian'') languages ( or ), also known as ''Arśi-Kuči'', Agnean-Kuchean or Kuchean-Agnean, are an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, the Tocharians. The l ...
See also
*
Phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
*
Predicate (grammar)
The term predicate is used in one of two ways in linguistics and its subfields. The first defines a predicate as everything in a standard declarative sentence except the subject, and the other views it as just the main content verb or associated ...
*
Zero copula
Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship (like the copula "to be" in English). One can distinguish languages that simply do not have a copula and languages tha ...
References
Sources
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Further reading
*
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