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What is wrong with this sentence, grammar wise? what is it missing?
"All the dogs are."
Can somebody tell me the proper term, like I know it's missing like a verb(ie All the dogs are sleeping) or adjective (ie all the dogs are red) or a noun (All the dogs are British..idk) but I want to know the actual term for that describes the whole thing.
Yeah, I know it's a fragment, but I'm talking about a term. Like is it missing a Direct Object, indirect, idk.
4 Answers
- Anonymous7 years ago
It's not a fragment; it has a subject ("the dogs") and a predicate (the verb "are").
This is an example of a 'deictic sentence' - a sentence that relies on external context to be understood semantically (see Wikipedia / deixis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deixis ).
Grammatical correctness doesn't require a sentence to be self-contained semantically. A large proportion of sentences aren't. <----- another example.
Source(s): Native UK English speaker, technical writer - Gretchen SLv 77 years ago
It's not missing a verb, and it isn't a fragment. In some cases, this could be a complete sentence, for example: Are the animals asleep? All the dogs are.
If you add an adjective or a noun, you call those "subject complements," but that doesn't cover adding a present participle such as "sleeping," which changes the verb tense.
All the dogs are asleep (subject complement/predicate adjective).
All the dogs are pets (subject complement/predicate nominative).
