Definitions
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- adjective linguistics Without a
verb .
Etymologies
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Examples
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That's not to say that there are none of Parsons 'usual coincidences, abrupt melodramas and statements of the bleeding obvious presented as aperçus and chopped up in short, verbless sentences.
Men from the Boys by Tony Parsons Harry Ritchie 2010
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Over the beat of the theme music the newscaster read out the headlines in verbless sound bites: “Suspected murder of a journalist in Luleå, 4,000 laid off at Ericsson, new library proposals from the ministry of culture, good evening, but first the Middle East, where a suicide bomber has this evening killed nine young people outside a café in Tel Aviv . . .”
Red Wolf Liza Marklund 2010
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Over the beat of the theme music the newscaster read out the headlines in verbless sound bites: “Suspected murder of a journalist in Luleå, 4,000 laid off at Ericsson, new library proposals from the ministry of culture, good evening, but first the Middle East, where a suicide bomber has this evening killed nine young people outside a café in Tel Aviv . . .”
Red Wolf Liza Marklund 2010
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Authors use such sentences all the time, often as a stylistic device to avoid excessive semi-colons although if you look at a Virginia Woolf novel, you will find both short verbless sentences and excessive semi-colons.
On long time no see DC 2010
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This wasn't a post about verbless sentences, and examples such as 'off with his head' are very different in character.
On long time no see DC 2010
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A: A great many speakers of English – probably most – use “me” (an object pronoun) rather than “I” (a subject or nominative pronoun), even though the pronoun would appear to be the subject of a verbless sentence.
The Grammarphobia Blog » Blog Archive » Who caught the fish? 2009
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Consider for example a verbless phrase like "One's own horse."
Archive 2008-03-01 2008
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To say 'I am', 'you are' or 'she is', one would use the personal pronoun in a verbless sentence.
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Consider for example a verbless phrase like "One's own horse."
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David Miliband's speech was full of Blair-style verbless sentences, which made me feel rather nostalgic.
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