Talk:Nominal sentence

Merger Proposal
This article should be merged with Zero copula. Though technically they may seem like dealing with two slightly different topics, in fact it is just two facets of the same phenomenon, i.e. the possibility of having a non-verbal predicate. The existence or not of an overt copula is merely one linguistic parameter which is related to this, and thus the discussion will be benefited from the merger of the two articles under Nominal sentence. Anyhow, I would like to hear some comments before the actual merger. בוקי סריקי (talk) 19:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Support – nothing to add to your reasoning. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 08:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose zero copulae are found with predicates that are not nominals (e.g. with adjectival and prepositional predicates) in many languages. Although nominal sentence could be moved here and be a subsection.Comhreir (talk) 15:35, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose. As Comhreir suggests, zero copulae may occur with adjectival as well as nominal predicatives. Also, the focus of the articles (morphosyntactic form of the copula versus syntactic structure of the sentence) is slightly different. Cnilep (talk) 15:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose Not all languages with nominal sentences appear to have zero copulas. For a geographical representation of such languages, see: http://wals.info/feature/120A#2/16.6/153.5. Additionally, while this article focuses on the zero copula analysis, the argument of whether zero copulas account for these sentences is still a lively debate. Alternative analyses should be included. With these points in mind, it seems that the two entries would best be kept independent.


 * No consensus for merge.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  11:59, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Misleading example
I take issue with the statement,

"a sentence with a predicate lacking a finite verb, like The more – the merrier. Usually, the missing verb is understood to be a form of to be"

This seems to imply that "the...the" expressions are sentences lacking the verb "to be", as if the full rendering of the sentence were "The more is the merrier."

This is not the case. Expressions which follow the form "the [more] the [merrier]" are adverbial phrases which are relics of the instrumental case in English, (so how this is an example of a nominal sentence I'm not sure), where what today is the definite article "the", was actually instrumental and demonstrative, signifying "by that" in modern usage.

We have article + comparative adjective/adverb, article + comparative adjective/adverb. There is no nominal in the example phrase cited.

A modern rendering, if a preposition were invoked might be "by that much more, by that much merrier", except it is not because syntactically the construction remains identical, although the case inflection has of course been long lost.

Compare: "He looks none the worse for wear".

Ref: Restrictiveness In Case Theory Old English "the"

Duprie37 (talk) 07:53, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

copula
English. He is here (adverb) He is happy (adjective) He is a bricklayer (art. + noun) All three types are pretty common Pamour (talk) 10:31, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Arab grammarians
The article states, "Arab grammarians of the early Middle Ages . . . viewed a sentence to have two basic categories: (1) a verbal sentence that begins with a noun, and (2) a nominal sentence that beings with a noun and may or may not have a verb within it." If this is indeed correct, it is so poorly worded, that I cannot understand the distinction.

I doubt if this is correct. It suggests that all classical Arabic sentences began with nouns. But classical Arabic was a VSO language, meaning that most sentences began with a finite verb. In any case the quoted sentence needs fixing. --71.178.95.236 (talk) 18:25, 15 December 2013 (UTC)