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I've finished reading The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language's small section on verbless clauses (pages 1266–1268), and I want to ask whether certain supplements are considered verbless clauses.

Before that, let's establish what a verbless clause is: a clause whose finite verb has been omitted. Here's an example, with the missing finite verb contained within square brackets:

[1] Dinner [was] over, they resumed their game of chess.

The type of structure I am unsure about is as follows:

[2] He was crying, [he was] obviously sad because of the passing of his father.

This structure omits not only the finite verb, but also the subject. This is not unusual in verbless clauses, but the examples given by CGEL show subjectless verbless clauses being accompanied by either a preposition or subordinating conjunction. See these examples:

[3] He can be very dangerous when [he is] drunk.

[4] The Chinese, whether [they are] drunk or sober, never kiss in public.

Is it fair to categorise example 2 as a verbless clause? I wouldn't call it an adjective phrase because, as far as I'm aware, adjuncts like 'obviously' and those introduced by 'because' don't accompany those types of phrases.

MJ Ada
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  • Infinitives, gerunds, and participles do not contain finite verbs, but they're awfully common constructions. Though they are far from verbless. And subject + aux deletion is mighty common too. – John Lawler Oct 16 '23 at 17:53
  • @JohnLawler Are you putting verbless clauses into one of those categories? CGEL has them completely separate, and yes, the ones you listed aren't verbless, nor do they contain finite verbs. – MJ Ada Oct 16 '23 at 17:56
  • @MJAda - no, I'm not commenting on CGEL at all. I was merely pointing out that the definition you give includes untensed clauses as well as ones without verbs. By the way, is it always auxiliary verbs like be that are missing? Why do you spose that is? – John Lawler Oct 16 '23 at 18:12
  • Apologies, John. I realise my definition was too broad and included anything without a finite verb, which it wasn't supposed to. I've edited that now. Hopefully, I haven't made an error again. About auxiliary verbs, I can't think of an example off the top of my head that omits a different verb other than 'be,' but I'm not making any assumptions. – MJ Ada Oct 16 '23 at 18:16
  • Well, then it's probly just conversational deletion. Auxiliaries, pronoun subjects, dummies, contractions, complementizers, and other little words tend to delete in fast speech. – John Lawler Oct 17 '23 at 01:15
  • OP: @JohnLawler is not a fan of CGEL, hence his not using their terminology. – alphabet Oct 17 '23 at 01:20
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    No, I like CGEL, but I think it's not a good grammar for beginners because it leaves too much out and invents its own theory and terminology whilst claiming to be theory-neutral. It's not. – John Lawler Oct 17 '23 at 02:17

1 Answers1

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He was crying, obviously sad because of the passing of his father.

In CGEL's terminology, "obviously sad because of the passing of his father" is, in fact, an adjective phrase.

In this sentence, it is acting as a predicative adjunct (p. 529). Predicative adjuncts can be either modifiers or supplements within the clause; in this case, because it's prosodically detached (as indicated by commas), it's acting as a supplement (see also p. 1359).

Within this adjective phrase, "obviously" and "because of the passing of his father" are both modifiers of the adjective "sad." Obviously adverbs can modify adjectives (as in "an obviously sad man"); so can prepositional phrases, as in "clear in his mind" or "tired to the point of exhaustion" (pp. 550, 646). This may not be obvious because attributive adjectives that occur before nouns usually aren't modified by PPs. But this is only because PPs are usually post-head modifiers in AdjPs and these are typically excluded in attributive AdjPs (see pp. 550, 552).

It is true that verbless clauses can occur without a subject, as you note. This is allowed after a preposition like when that allows a reducible clause, as in "when drunk" (p. 638, 1267). This is also allowed in the exhaustive conditional construction, as in "whether drunk or sober" (p. 990, 1268); "whether" here is a marker of clause subordination, so we must take "drunk or sober" to be a clause of some sort.

In your example, though, there is no reason to posit that "obviously sad because of the passing of his father" is a verbless clause. If CGEL thinks that verbless clauses without subjects can act as supplements (without a word like "when" or "whether"), it doesn't say so.

A note about terminology: "obviously" and "because of the passing of his father" are modifiers, but not adjuncts. The term "adjunct" includes "modifiers in clause (or VP) structure together with related supplements" (p. 59); thus it does not include modifiers within an AdjP. Also: CGEL strongly objects to the term "subordinating conjunction"; see pp. 1011-1014 for their extended diatribe about this.

Edit: There may be cases where subjectless verbless clauses can function as adjuncts; see this answer. But I see no reason to posit that here.

alphabet
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  • A very useful answer. To add to it, how would you analyse 'still sad because of the passing of his father'? Do adjectives take polarity-sensitive aspectual-related modifiers, such as 'still,' as pre-head compliment? – MJ Ada Oct 17 '23 at 09:03
  • @MJAda If you have another question, please post it as a separate question, not as a comment. – alphabet Oct 17 '23 at 17:49
  • Apologies. I thought they fell within the same bracket. – MJ Ada Oct 17 '23 at 18:22
  • OP’s [1] starts with—in traditional grammar terms—an absolute phase. How does CGEL characterize/label such a thing? – Tinfoil Hat Oct 18 '23 at 01:25
  • @TinfoilHat That one is, in fact, a verbless clause supplement. – alphabet Oct 18 '23 at 01:31