My teacher believes that every sentence has a verb but I want to prove her wrong. (My teacher told the class that whoever can find a sentence with no verb she will give them a prize.)
Does anyone know and example of a sentence that has no verb?
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1Why do you want to prove her wrong? It would be one thing if you already knew of such a verb-less sentence and then you wanted more example sentences to prove her wrong. But it seems like you don't know of such a sentence.– AIQOct 23, 2019 at 23:55
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@AIQ Because they'll get a prize if they can produce such a sentence? Well, they don't know of such a sentence, so they're asking for it here. I don't see any issues here, except that the question is trivia-ish rather than on the practical side, but it's still very much about English.– user3395Nov 30, 2019 at 10:57
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@userr2684291 I meant no harm. Perfectly acceptable question for ELL. And the prize part was actually edited in by J.R. later - which was actually a reply from OP to my comment (that is what I intended with my comment - to get more context from OP). I was just curious. I also upvoted the question when OP mentioned about the prize thing. :)– AIQNov 30, 2019 at 20:28
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2 Answers
Many sentences without an explicit verb still have an implicit verb—a verb that has merely been elided. Answers to questions often work like this. For example: "What's your name?" "Verena." That is, "My name is Verena." I'm not sure those should count.
These sentences, however, really do follow syntactic structures for a full sentence that inherently do not contain a verb:
The more, the merrier.
Off with her head!
Out with the old and in with the new.
The first one is explained in more detail here. It's an important sentence structure for an ESL learner to know, and it's important to understand that it really has no verb lurking in it, not even implicitly.
Also, interjections stand as full sentences without a verb:
Hello.
Oh no!
Gosh!
Ouch!
D'ohh!!!
answered Oct 24, 2019 at 1:05
There are any number of "sentences" that consist of short exclamations or interjections, and which contain no verb. An easy example of this is a response to a question:
A: Is your answer a complete sentence?
B: Yes.
Now, I can't say whether your teacher will agree that "Yes" is a complete English sentence, but you can always try and see what she says.
