Sentence words
Encyclopedia
Sentence words are single words that form a full sentence
, such as "Alas." and "Yes." and "No."
. Henry Sweet described them as "a variety of words which have the peculiarity of always forming a sentence by themselves". The Dutch linguist J. M. Hoogvliet calls them "volzinwoorden". They were also noted in 1891 by Georg von der Gabelentz, whose observations were extensively elaborated by Hoogvliet in 1903. Wegener called them "Wortsätze".
Sweet gives sentences such as "Come!", "John!", "Alas!" as examples of sentence words, in addition to "Yes." and "No.". Gabelentz does not list "Yes." and "No." as sentence words, however.
Many sentence words have formed from a process of devaluation and semantic erosion. Various phrases in various languages have devolved into the words for "yes" and "no" (which can be found discussed in detail in yes and no
), and these include expletive sentence words such as "Well!" and the French "Ben!" (a parallel to "Bien!").
However, not all word sentences suffer from this loss of lexical meaning. A subset of sentence words, which Fonagy calls "nominal phrases", exist that retain their lexical meaning. These exist in Uralic languages, and are the remainders of an archaic syntax wherein there were no explicit markers for nouns and verbs. An example of this is the Hungarian language
"Fecske!", which transliterates as "Swallow!", but which has to be idiomatically translated with multiple words "Look! A swallow!" for rendering the proper meaning of the original, which to a native Hungarian speaker is neither elliptical
nor emphatic, in English. Such nominal phrase word sentences occur in English as well, particularly in telegraphese or as the rôte questions that are posed to fill in form data (e.g. "Name?", "Age?").
Modern Hebrew
exhibits some sentence words too, e.g. ".חַם" (/χam/) = "It is hot." or ".קַר" (/kar/) = "It is cold.".
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
, such as "Alas." and "Yes." and "No."
Yes and no
Yes and no are two words for expressing affirmatives and negatives respectively in English . Early Middle English had a four-form system, but Modern English has reduced this to a two-form system consisting of 'yes' and 'no'. Some languages do not answer yes-no questions with single words meaning...
. Henry Sweet described them as "a variety of words which have the peculiarity of always forming a sentence by themselves". The Dutch linguist J. M. Hoogvliet calls them "volzinwoorden". They were also noted in 1891 by Georg von der Gabelentz, whose observations were extensively elaborated by Hoogvliet in 1903. Wegener called them "Wortsätze".
Sweet gives sentences such as "Come!", "John!", "Alas!" as examples of sentence words, in addition to "Yes." and "No.". Gabelentz does not list "Yes." and "No." as sentence words, however.
Many sentence words have formed from a process of devaluation and semantic erosion. Various phrases in various languages have devolved into the words for "yes" and "no" (which can be found discussed in detail in yes and no
Yes and no
Yes and no are two words for expressing affirmatives and negatives respectively in English . Early Middle English had a four-form system, but Modern English has reduced this to a two-form system consisting of 'yes' and 'no'. Some languages do not answer yes-no questions with single words meaning...
), and these include expletive sentence words such as "Well!" and the French "Ben!" (a parallel to "Bien!").
However, not all word sentences suffer from this loss of lexical meaning. A subset of sentence words, which Fonagy calls "nominal phrases", exist that retain their lexical meaning. These exist in Uralic languages, and are the remainders of an archaic syntax wherein there were no explicit markers for nouns and verbs. An example of this is the Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
"Fecske!", which transliterates as "Swallow!", but which has to be idiomatically translated with multiple words "Look! A swallow!" for rendering the proper meaning of the original, which to a native Hungarian speaker is neither elliptical
Ellipsis (linguistics)
In linguistics, ellipsis or elliptical construction refers to the omission from a clause of one or more words that would otherwise be required by the remaining elements.-Overview:...
nor emphatic, in English. Such nominal phrase word sentences occur in English as well, particularly in telegraphese or as the rôte questions that are posed to fill in form data (e.g. "Name?", "Age?").
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew , also known as Israeli Hebrew or Modern Israeli Hebrew, is the language spoken in Israel and in some Jewish communities worldwide, from the early 20th century to the present....
exhibits some sentence words too, e.g. ".חַם" (/χam/) = "It is hot." or ".קַר" (/kar/) = "It is cold.".