Sentence word

A sentence word (also called a one-word sentence) is a single word that forms a full sentence.

Henry Sweet described sentence words as 'an area under one's control' and gave words such as "Come!", "John!", "Alas!", "Yes." and "No." as examples of sentence words.[1] The Dutch linguist J. M. Hoogvliet described sentence words as "volzinwoorden".[2] They were also noted in 1891 by Georg von der Gabelentz, whose observations were extensively elaborated by Hoogvliet in 1903; he does not list "Yes." and "No." as sentence words. Wegener called sentence words "Wortsätze".[3]

  1. ^ Henry Sweet (1900). "Adverbs". A New English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 127. ISBN 978-1-4021-5375-4.
  2. ^ Jan Noordegraaf (2001). "J. M. Hoogvliet as a teacher and theoretician". In Marcel Bax; C. Jan-Wouter Zwart; A. J. van Essen (eds.). Reflections on Language and Language Learning. John Benjamins B.V. p. 24. ISBN 978-90-272-2584-9.
  3. ^ Giorgio Graffi (2001). 200 Years of Syntax. John Benjamins B.V. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-58811-052-7.