[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
"No" and "I" are not sentences, they are sentence fragments.

You are incorrect. The definition of "sentence" accoring to the American Heritage Dictionary is:

A grammatical unit that is syntactically independent and has a subject that is expressed or, as in imperative sentences, understood and a predicate that contains at least one finite verb.

Note carefully that 'syntactically independent' does NOT mean that the sentence cannot be dependant on other sentances for context or meaning. So by that definition "No.", "Go.", or "I am." are all perfectly acceptable sentences. As long as we are both talking about "I" in it's latin meaning of "Go." I would agree that "I" in english is not syntactically independent, and therfore is not a sentance.

I do have a single word sentance that requires no additional information to be completely and clearly understood.

"Duck!"

However, duck is four letters, so technically it's longer then "I am." despite being only one word. It is faster to say though, being only one syllable instead of two.

Pretty much any verb can be used as an imperative one word sentance where the subject is unterstood from the context in which it is used.

Geoschmo

[ November 13, 2003, 12:42: Message edited by: geoschmo ]