It's said that a sentence must always contain a subject and a verb but I have read somewhere that the word "No" itself is a complete sentence. How? Also a sentence always has at least one clause and clauses are s+v combo, So how "No" acts as both sentence and a clause?
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Perhaps in a similar way to your own single-word sentence, "How?".– LawrenceCommented Apr 10, 2020 at 17:00
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@Lawrence What?– Jiminy Cricket.Commented Apr 10, 2020 at 17:31
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@Bitterdreggs. Indeed.– LawrenceCommented Apr 10, 2020 at 23:30
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@Lawrence Autological......– Jiminy Cricket.Commented Apr 10, 2020 at 23:36
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4 Answers
Yes:
Go.
Eat.
Leave.
Insert any other intransitive verb used in the imperative mood.
An imperative construction is considered complete (complete sentence, independent clause), even though you can't see a subject in it.
Have a talk with your grammarian or linguist regarding the classification of pro-forms (such as No.) and elliptical constructions.
answered Apr 10, 2020 at 19:38
You can consider it as an abbreviation. When you say No/Yes it may refer to a sentence such as "Yes, it is," or "No, it isn't"
There are many "One word sentences"
- Interrogative - Who? How? When?
- Imperative - Stop! Halt! Jump!
- Declarative - Me. Him. Her
- Locative - Here. There. Everywhere.
- Nominative - Jane. John. Harry.
And so on. In these cases, the subject and the verb are tied to the context of the situation and are implied.
For instance,
- A asks - "Where is your father?"
- B answers - "Inside"
Here the subject and verb are implied.
In short, I think a single word sentence is not grammatically wrong unless it is devoid of context which supplies the verb and the subject.
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I think nominative and declarative are same. What you mention as declarative is objective, or accusative. It looks like a mix up of sentence types and cases. Sentences are a) Declarative/ assertive/ statements, b) Interrogative, c) Imperative, and d) Exclamatory. Cases are: a) Nominative, b) accusative, c) dative, d) genitive, and e) vocative. You may check it. I may be corrected if I am wrong. Commented Apr 11, 2020 at 4:04
There is an important part of speech that some people forget about, called Interjections. I believe "yes" or "no" could be considered an interjection when used alone. Yes/no are not nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, or conjunctions when used in this context.
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No, interjections are spontaneous expressions of emotions and do not include "yes" or "no" apart from single cases in which they might index joy or disappointment respectively.– user373710Commented Apr 11, 2020 at 15:54