Verbless clause
Verbless clauses are comprised, semantically, of a predicand, expressed or not, and a verbless predicate. For example, the underlined string in we've been at home a lot means the same thing as the clause the children are so sick. It attributes the predicate "so sick" to the predicand "the children". In most contexts, *the children so sick would be ungrammatical.
History of the concept
In the early days of generative grammar, new conceptions of the clause were emerging. Paul Postal and Noam Chomsky argued that every verb phrase had a subject, even if none was expressed,. As a result, every VP was thought to head a clause.The idea of verbless clauses was perhaps introduced by James McCawley in the early 1980s with examples like the underlined part of with John in jail... meaning "John is in jail".
Examples
English
In Modern English, verbless clauses are common as the complement of with or without.Other prepositions such as although, once, when, and while also take verbless clause complements, such as Although no longer a student, she still dreamed of the school, in which the predicand corresponds to the subject of the main clause, she. Supplements, too can be verbless clauses, as in Many people came, some of them children or Break over, they returned to work.
Neither A comprehensive grammar of the English language norThe Cambridge grammar of the English language offer any speculations about the structure of such clauses. The latter says, without hedging, "the head of a clause is realised by a VP." It's not clear how such a statement could be compatible with the existence of verbless clauses.
| Independent | Dependent |
| What a great thing to do! How odd that nobody noticed! Out of my way! | He stood there quietly, with his hands in his pockets. Whether a fact or not, it is commonly believed. Whatever the reason, it's annoying. He didn't love her as much as she him. The bramble shook as if alive. |
Gurindji Kriol language
Ascriptive clauses consist of a subject noun and nominalised adjective.Existential clauses contain a subject with locative phrase.
Possessive constructions consist of a nominal acting as a predicates, taking another nominal argument. In these clauses the head is marked dative. Inalienable nominals are only optionally marked dative.
Jingulu language
In Jingulu language, predicates in verbless clauses can be adjectives or nouns, possessors, adpositionals, or adverbs.'''Verbless clause example:'''