Complete The Sentences With One Of The Adjectives Above: Fill & Download for Free

For starters, allow me to introduce the major hole in English linguistics terminology. And these three example sentences will help me:A cat chases a dogTo think is humanShe ate her breakfastNow a question: how do you refer to the syntactic role that the highlighted words occupy in the sentences? Or else: how do you refer to the slot between subject and object that ties the two together?The answer: there is no unambiguous word in English to refer to it.Usually, linguists resort to one of two options:A) We could call it a verb. That’s how it’s called in language typology: in SVO structure, for example, the letters stand for “subject-verb-object”.The problem is, though, that ‘verb’ is already a name for a word class. Word classes (e.g., ‘noun’, ‘adjective’, ‘adverb’) are word categories by their morphology (common word endings) and syntactic roles that they could take. While syntactic roles (e.g., ‘subject’, ‘object’, ‘attribute’) are particular slots in a sentence that don’t exist outside of a sentence.Just because the word class of a verb tends to occupy the syntactic role in question doesn’t mean that the two are the same. And to illustrate it, please go back to the second example sentence. Is ‘to think’ a verb, but suddenly… not a verb?So, when people say that they’ve just invented a verbless language, you could guess all you want what they mean. Is it like:“My language has usual rigid syntax like in English, German or Japanese — but there are no word classes.”Or do they mean:“My language has completely alien syntax. It doesn’t rely on SVO or similar pattern, and has no subjects or objects as well.”B) We could also call it a predicate. However, not only this term has nothing to do with the syntactic slot in question — it has nothing to do with linguistics at all.It’s a term from logic.Any statement, be it a sentence in whatever language or some logical formula, has a predicate structure: meaning that in every statement, there’s something that we make a statement about (a logical subject), and the actual statement about the subject (a predicate).Linguists have adopted the term to refer to the syntactic slot between S and O — but technically, predicate isn’t that. In a sentence:Helen is a sophomore student from Stanford.the entire highlighted part is a predicate. The sentence is a statement about Helen (hence, she’s a subject). The rest of the sentence is new information about her that we state — a predicate. If you’re familiar with programming, we’ve kinda applied a function: Helen is our variable to modify, and the statement is the actual function that changes the properties of the variable.Now, for you to understand the point better, let’s break the default logical structure of the sentence with a dialogue:Joe: “Tell me something interesting about Stanford!”Moe: “Well, Helen is a sophomore student from Stanford.”Now suddenly, Stanford is a logical subject. Firstly, Joe sets the subject for discussion, and then, Moe makes a statement about it: that Helen studies there. The university is what we’re interested in, while Helen is now part of the logical predicate.Obviously, the sentence structure doesn’t agree with it: Helen is the syntactic subject in the sentence, and you don’t change that without shuffling the actual words around. But the dialogue has certain logical composition nonetheless, which doesn’t give a damn about the words or the language. Logic is sort-of above languages, and searching for predicate is not about cracking your head over syntax: you have to analyse the actual meaning of the statement made by a sentence.So here we are.This is why I am a strong proponent of introducing a new, separate word for “V” syntactic slot. Personally, I prefer to call it verbicate (good thing that it keeps the ‘V’ letter in SVO). So here’s another exotic option for you:C) Call it a verbicate — be unambiguous.Now that the prelude is over — back to your actual question.If by “a language without predicate” you mean “a language without verbicate”, then absolutely yes. I’ve already covered this in my other answer, so I won’t be repeating. But in short: verbicate-based syntax is just one type of syntax that by no means is the only possible. It has proven itself to be effective (no kidding — ten thousand years of being virtually the exclusive type of syntax in natural human languages), and yet syntax could be anything. There probably are millions of ways to build a sentence, and what you’re after has been done repeatedly by many conlangers.If by “predicate” you mean the actual predicate, then it’s kinda yes/no answer:Yes, a language can be without predicates, because no language has predicates. It’s not a property or part of languages at all, and you can’t use linguistical methods to study or look for predicates. Just because a language is a tool to convey predicated statements doesn’t mean that the tool must inherit the property of the tooled.No, a language cannot be spoken without predicates. Regardless of how grotesque or alien a language is, communication is still communication: the exchange of statements between interlocutors. When you speak, you convey information about something, meaning that every statement regardless of language can be broken down into a logical subject and what’s being stated about it.In some languages, the grammar might more-or-less align with logical predicate structure; in other languages, it may not at all. But the statements remain the statements. Even if you ditched languages and used pictures to communicate — you still would be making statements, and thus use predicates.Damn, even when my cat meows for food, she makes a statement that has a subject and a predicate.To sum up, your question is roughly the same as “can a language exist without time?”: before you ask, make sure you’re talking about tense, because time is kinda out of languages’ scope.

Amongst writers, one of the ever-quotable Mark Twain’s most quoted witticisms is the succinct bit of advice (which could just as easily have referred to adverbs) found in Pudd’nhead Wilson: “As to the Adjective: When in doubt, strike it out.”Ah, modifiers! What writer hasn’t had a joyous fling or two with that most seductive of all parts of speech? In an effort to convey the brilliance and vividness of our prose, we hand out modifiers like candy at a Fourth of July parade. After all, it’s imperative that the reader understand that the barn in question is big, red, and rundown. That the kid on the playground is fighting wildly and ferociously. That the ship’s white canvas sails are billowing in the wind. That’s all need-to-know information, right?Well, maybe. No one will argue that modifiers clarify mental images. At least, that’s the message we absorbed during all those grade school years of diagramming sentence after sentence chocked full of adjectives and adverbs. What we probably didn’t learn from all those years of diagramming is that modifiers are the sign of a lazy writer. Modifiers break the cardinal rule of storytelling: Show, don't tell.In the three sentences mentioned above, never once did I show you what the barn looked like, or the kid who was fighting, or the ship’s sails. With the help of my modifiers, you probably got the general idea, but how much more vivid would those sentences have been had I taken the time to show you? What if I had allowed you to see the dust swirling in the shadows of the barn, the pigeons roosting in the patches of sunlight that spill through the holes in the roof? What if you had seen the kid on the playground smacking his fists into someone’s face, blood splattering from his opponent's nose? What if the wind had whipped the ship’s sails, filling them to bursting and churning the waves to froth at the prow?See the difference? By deleting my modifiers, I was forced to dig deeper for specific nouns (pigeons, fists, nose, froth, prow) and vibrant verbs (swirling, roosting, spill, smacking, splattering, whipped, bursting, churning). These are words the reader can sink his teeth into. Suddenly, we can hear the flutter and coo of the pigeons in the rafters, we can feel the warmth of blood against our skin, we can smell the salt and seaweed of an ocean voyage.But does this mean that the modifier is dead? Should we avoid them completely? Of course not. Modifiers, like all parts of speech, serve their purpose. Another quote from Twain:“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English—it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” ( Letter to D. W. Bowser, 3/20/1880)Adjectives and adverbs exist in the English language for the sole purpose of refining it. We cannot show the reader every detail, both due to time and space constraints and the simple fact that some things—such as colors—are impossible to show on the written page without a bit of telling. When added to an already strong scene, modifiers can boost the description into precision and vibrancy.Take, for instance, one of our example sentences. The new description of the ship doesn’t indicate that the sails are white canvas. I didn’t include those details because most readers will assume this to be the case unless told differently. But what if my ship belonged to the Dread Pirate Roberts who always lofted black sails when he went into battle? Suddenly, we have a vital detail that could only be conveyed with a modifier:The wind whipped the ship’s ash-black sails, filling them to bursting and churning the waves to froth at the prow.Notice that this sentence conveys everything the original version did (and more), yet it contains only one modifier.Even when modifiers are necessary, economy is vital. It’s ridiculously easy to get carried away with modifiers. When we write phrases about “the remarkably, incandescently, breathtakingly gorgeous woman,” we not only smother our reader in repetition, we also drown out the already strong modifier “gorgeous.”So, in short, while we probably need not go to Mark Twain’s suggested extreme of extermination, our writing can only be better for a careful pruning of adjectives and adverbs. Modifiers do their job best when used sparingly.

First of all, the word "all" is a quantifier rather than an adjective. This makes a considerable difference, since, as a quantifier, it can function as the subject of the sentence, whereas an adjective cannot. So, the issue is not as black-and-white (or cut-and-dried) as may seem at first glance (and as others have suggested in their answers).In the sentence "All the work was completed ...," it is possible to turn the quantifier "all" into a pronoun and use it instead of the noun as the subject of the sentence.Consider this sentence: "All the books are mine." We could just as correctly say, if the context allowed it: "All are mine." In this case "all" does indeed become the subject of the sentence. We can do this for all of the quantifiers: "Some are mine"; "Most are mine"; "Many are mine"; "A few are mine"; and so on. In all of these cases, the quantifiers function as pronouns and as the subject of the sentence. If you consider this, then you have to conclude that even in the sentence "All the work was done ..." the subject is technically "all" and not "work."Another way to come at this is to consider the negation of the subject. If only some of the work was completed by Mr. Smith, we would say: "Not all the work was completed by Mr. Smith." Notice how we negate "all" and not "work." And in the case of the sentence about the books, we would say: "Not all are mine." Notice how "work" and "books" do not feature at all in this process. To understand this a little better, consider this sentence:The work was done by Mr. Smith.If we wanted to negate the subject, we would say:No work was done by Mr. Smith.Notice how "work" has been negated, establishing clearly that in this pair of sentences, "work" is definitely the subject. Thus, when we negate "all" (as we did above) we are tacitly admitting that "all" is the subject of the sentence.Another way to come at it is to look at a variation of the sentence: "Some of the work was completed by Mr. Smith." There is a fundamental difference in meaning between this sentence and the original sentence, and the difference lies not in the word "work," but in the quantifier. If changing the quantifier changes the meaning of the sentence, then we can hardly say that "work" is the subject of the sentence, since "work" has not changed at all from one sentence to the next, and yet the meaning of the sentence has changed dramatically. If the subject does not change, then the meaning of the sentence cannot change either.So, it is not absolutely clear that "work" is the subject of the sentence, and "all" is definitely not an adjective modifying "work." We cannot do with adjectives what we just did (above) with "all" and the other quantifiers.Now, for the other question: Adding "of" to "all" does not make much of a difference in the sentence. "All" still remains a quantifier, and it can still be converted into a pronoun and used as the subject of the sentence.