Timeline for "The more, the merrier!" -- Is this a sentence? If not... what?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 10, 2023 at 14:22 | history | edited | Laurel♦ |
edited tags
|
|
| Dec 31, 2018 at 12:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglish/status/1079708809780781056 | ||
| Dec 31, 2018 at 1:32 | answer | added | Joe | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 7, 2014 at 15:11 | vote | accept | chiastic-security | ||
| Nov 27, 2014 at 6:36 | answer | added | Gary Botnovcan | timeline score: 6 | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 21:41 | comment | added | John Lawler | The answer is that it depends on how you define a sentence. If you want to define it yourself, feel free; if you want to follow scientific practice, ditto. | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 20:02 | comment | added | chiastic-security | @JohnLawler I might ask a follow-up question about whether something written has to be said to be a sentence, if that's OK. | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 18:57 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @John Language is also a technology. As are hands. At some point technology becomes so ubiquitous and invisible, it becomes part of the way the world is. So it is with writing. Anyway, the words "The more the merrier" existed in some human's mind, however briefly, before they were ever uttered aloud or written down. I can't see a meaningful and useful way to define "sentence" which excludes this string of these four words in this order. | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 18:50 | comment | added | John Lawler | If it can't be said, it's not a sentence. And if it's written it's not a sentence until it's said, if only in the reader's mind. Language is oral; writing is just technology (and in the case of English, technology long past its last tuneup). | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 18:48 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @John That seems suspiciously noncommittal to me. It hasn't been uttered, it has been written. So unless you want to back off to calling it a "string" or something equally nondescriptive, it's a sentence. Yes? | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 18:38 | history | edited | tchrist♦ |
edited tags
|
|
| Nov 26, 2014 at 18:37 | comment | added | John Lawler | It's certainly an utterance, like "Ouch!". And it has a parsable syntactic structure (mostly consisting of deleted constituents, which is normal for idioms) and a clear contextualized meaning. So calling it a sentence won't cause any trouble, unless Sister Juliana insists on seeing the verb. | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 17:56 | answer | added | user2903828 | timeline score: -2 | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 17:39 | comment | added | Dan Bron | It is a sentence. The idea hat a sentence must have a "main verb" to deserve the name is a canard. Seriously. | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 17:29 | history | asked | chiastic-security | CC BY-SA 3.0 |