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Transcript

00:04

Sentence Fragments, a la Shmoop. Mary is a waitress, and she has to put up

00:08

with a lot at her job: aching feet...

00:11

...the smell of fried food...

00:13

...and the butt-ugly line cook who has a crush on her.

00:16

But there's nothing that drives Mary quite so crazy as when her customers speak to her

00:22

in sentence fragments. When Mary asks Bill the bus driver what he

00:26

wants for lunch and he says, "Reuben sandwich"...

00:28

...his response is a sentence fragment.

00:31

When Mrs. Crabtree the retiree shakes her glass at Mary from across the room and yells,

00:35

"Tea!"...

00:36

...the old bat is speaking in sentence fragments.

00:39

Really, with all the sentence fragments Mary hears every day, it's a miracle she hasn't

00:44

gone at anyone with a steak knife. Grammatically correct sentences, as a rule,

00:48

have at least one subject and one verb.

00:50

For example, in the two-word sentence, "Mary cleaned"...

00:53

...we have the subject of the sentence, Mary...

00:55

...performing the action verb "cleaned".

01:02

Sentence fragments, however, tend to lack verbs, which is why they aren't real sentences.

01:06

Now, sometimes we encounter one-word sentences that look like sentence fragments, but are

01:10

actually full-on, pure-blooded sentences.

01:13

For example, there's the imperative sentence form, which consists of a one-word command.

01:22

When a customer spills his drink on the floor and Mary's boss says, "Mop!"...

01:26

...the word "mop" is the command...

01:28

...and Mary is the implied subject.

01:32

When a customer tries to sneak out of the restaurant without paying her bill, and Mary

01:36

shrieks, "Pay!"...

01:37

...the word "pay" is the command...

01:38

...and the thieving customer is the implied subject.

01:42

It's also possible to make one-word sentences out of exclamations.

01:47

When Mary drops a plate on the floor and screams "CENSORED!"...

01:51

...the exclamation "CENSORED!" is a sentence.

01:57

When Mary gets lemon juice in a paper cut on her finger and yells "Ouch!"...

02:00

...the exclamation "Ouch!" is a sentence. But...still not as much fun to yell as "CENSORED!"

02:07

Now, here comes the tricky part. It just so happens that, sometimes, we can have both

02:11

a subject and a verb...

02:13

...but no sentence. This type of sentence fragment occurs when the subject and the verb

02:18

are part of a dependent clause.

02:20

Dependent clauses have two characteristics: they start with a subordinating conjunction

02:25

like "because", "although", or "if"...

02:28

...and they depend on the existence of a main clause.

02:34

Say we have the sentence, "Although Mr. Johnson had a forty-dollar ticket, he only

02:39

tipped Mary two bucks."

02:41

If the dependent clause "Although Mr. Johnson had a forty-dollar ticket" stood on its

02:46

own, it wouldn't make any sense. It's a sentence fragment, and we need the rest

02:50

of the sentence...

02:51

...the main clause, "He only tipped Mary two bucks"...

02:56

...to explain what the dependent clause means...

02:59

...and what the dependent clause means is that Mr. Johnson... is a jerk.

03:06

Let's try another. Say we have the sentence, "Because the parents were too lazy to go

03:12

into the bathroom, they changed their baby's diaper at their table in the middle of the

03:17

restaurant."

03:18

If the dependent clause "Because the parents were too lazy to go into the bathroom" stood

03:22

on its own, we'd be lost. And quite intrigued.

03:25

This sentence fragment needs its main clause, "They changed their baby's diaper at their

03:30

table in the middle of the restaurant"...

03:31

...to provide context...

03:32

...and the context provided is that some people... are nasty.

03:42

There are some easy ways to check whether or not a sentence is actually a sentence fragment.

03:46

If there's a verb, then it's probably a sentence.

03:48

If there's only one word...

03:50

...and that word is an exclamation or a command...

03:52

...then it's a sentence.

03:53

If it's a dependent clause with no main clause to tag along with, it's a sentence

03:58

fragment. And now we must excuse Mary. She's going

04:01

to pay Mr. Johnson back for his lousy tip by slipping some hand soap into his salad.

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