Incomplete proposals

The so-called incomplete sentences, that is, those in which one of the members are omitted, are often found in both colloquial and literary speech. Not only secondary, but also the main members of the sentence, the subject or predicate, can be absent from them.

Their semantic load can be easily restored both from the context (from the proposals that precede the given one), and from the knowledge of the interlocutor or the reader of the situation.

Example of an incomplete sentence:

"Where's your brother?"

- He left.

Here "I left" is an incomplete sentence consisting of one word. In it the subject is omitted, but one can understand from the previous statement about whom exactly it is about (about the brother).

A certain difficulty is the distinction between incomplete and one-part sentences, in which either the subject or the predicate is omitted. Here you can use the following criterion. For example, from the sentence "Harvesting berries in the forest" it is completely incomprehensible who performs the action. Let's take another example: "And where are your friends? "Berries gather in the forest." Here the subject is omitted, but from the context it is easy to establish who exactly performs the specified action (girlfriends). Hence, in the first case we are dealing with a single-component, and in the second case - with an incomplete two-part sentence, although the list of words in them is completely identical.

It should be noted that a dialogue with incomplete sentences is the most frequent, characteristic situation of their use. To the teacher, when examining such examples in the teaching practice, it is enough simply to create in the students the idea of an incomplete sentence as a version of the complete one - in contrast to one-part sentences, where one of the (necessarily!) Main members is not missing, but simply impossible. To do this, you can also compare complete and incomplete sentences. In the incomplete, all members retain the same grammatical forms and functions as in the complete. In turn, one-part sentences can also be incomplete if the word that is missed in them can easily be recovered from the context:

"How do they call you, damsel?"

- Mary.

Incomplete sentences (examples can be found below) can be of two types, depending on how their meaning is restored: contextual or situational. Inside the first there are:

1. Simple sentences in which their individual members are absent (the possible variants are the subject, the predicate, the subject and the predicate, the predicate and the complement, the predicate and circumstance, finally, the circumstance or complementation with the definition in the proposal relating to the absent member). This type also includes the so-called elliptical sentences, which many philologists single out in their hotel appearance. Their characteristic feature is that the meaning of the sentence is revealed and without its missing member (most often this is a predicate). Moreover, in many cases it is impossible to establish which word is missed, neither from the context, nor from the situation. For example:

Behind us is the river.

In this sentence, a dash can replace, for example, the word "is", "lies", "left", etc. Which it is impossible to establish.

2. Complex proposals in which "fell out", that is, either the main or the subordinate part remained unnamed.

3. Included in the complex incomplete sentences, in which the term is not available, which is available in another part of a complex, complex or unconstrained sentence. For example:

In summer the day is longer, and in the winter - shorter (the sentence is compound).

Situational Called incomplete sentences, in which the meaning of the missing members is clear from the situation:

I'll be in blue tonight.

From incomplete it is necessary to distinguish sentences having in the compound nominal predicate the so-called null bundle serving as an indicator of the present tense, indicative mood :

Knowledge is power.

As for punctuation marks in incomplete sentences, dashes are often placed in them. His role in this case, as already mentioned above, is the replacement of a missed word, usually a predicate.

I came home early and my sister was late.

In this example, a dash replaces the word "came", allowing you to avoid incorrect, unnecessary repetitions.

On the table - bread and fruit.

In this example, a dash is used instead of the missing predicate (elliptic sentence).