Grammatically, is a 体言止めの文 a "Japanese sentence"?


In Japanese, a **文【ぶん】** is basically anything which is delimited by periods
(マル) or question/exclamation marks. For example, let's say there is a
paragraph like this in the middle of the main text of a novel.

> 夕暮れの川岸を一人で歩く俺。太陽の光を浴びて輝く水面。頬を撫でる風。

Here, we have rather simple
[体言止め](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/14524/5010) expressions, which
make this paragraph compact yet dramatic. Despite being 体言止め, I believe there
are **three 文** in this paragraph, simply because there are three periods. If
I were to explain this paragraph with grammatical terms, I would say something
like this: "This is a paragraph which contains three sentences. Each sentence
lacks a main predicate; instead, one long noun phrase forms the entire
sentence."

However, on this site, I keep seeing assertions like "Strictly/Grammatically
speaking, this is not a sentence in the first place" to explain this pattern.
And to my surprise, apparently many users favor this type of explanation. The
most recent example is
[this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/48811/5010).

So I thought, "Ah okay, **grammatically** speaking, _sentence_ in English
means something different from 文 in Japanese, and a _sentence_ always needs a
main predicate!"

However, I failed to find any credible source to support this. All the serious
English articles I've read so far say that a sentence doesn't necessarily have
a main predicate. For example, "Hi.", "Yes.", "At three o'clock." and "Two
pizzas with cheese crust, please." are English sentences (categorized as
[minor
sentences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_\(linguistics\)#Major_and_minor_sentences))
simply because they begin with a capital letter and end with a period. Simply
put, I found essentially no difference between _sentence_ in English and 文 in
Japanese.

So my question is as follows: Is 文 different from _sentence_? Ordinary English
speakers have an idea of _sentence_ which is different from the formal
dictionary definition? English speakers who are learning Japanese actually
tend to feel **there is no sentence** in the paragraph above? If yes, how many
sentences are there in [this
article](http://ja.uncyclopedia.info/wiki/%E4%BD%93%E8%A8%80%E6%AD%A2%E3%82%81)?
I feel there are dozens of 文's, and I have never doubted that. On a website
where not everyone is an expert, is it unsafe/misleading/unpractical to call
the 文 above 'Japanese sentences'?

As far as I can tell, I have never seen a Japanese article which says
something like "体言止めの"文"には述語がないので、厳密な文法的には文ではありません".




When I went to school (K12 in the US during the 70's and early 80's), I was
taught that a sentence had to have a subject and a predicate (usually they
said _verb_ instead of _predicate_ ). But then what exactly are things like
"Hello!"

Broadly speaking, what I was taught works very well for formally written,
academic, and business English. But often when I write in my journal or even
when writing comments on students papers, the style I write in is a rather
abbreviated form omitting subjects or occasionally verbs. Yet, what I write is
still punctuated, and for want of a better word, I would most likely call them
sentences despite the fact that they don't line up with what I was taught.

I think for me what I would call a sentence is something that is recognizable
as a complete thought. So in grading a paper, I might write in the margin
"poor word choice". I think that expresses a whole thought but I wouldn't be
surprised that some would be pedantic enough to argue it's not a proper
sentence.

Today I dropped by my local 紀伊国屋 and picked up a copy of マララ. First I was
struck by how different it reads in Japanese from English. It made me wonder
what the original text was written in. But more to the point, I noticed that
many of the _sentences_ in the Japanese translation just weren't really what I
would have thought of as sentences. They just seemed to end with out a verb.
Sometimes they just ended at what felt like mid-sentence. Yet, the text was
perfectly understandable. I knew what the author was saying. And it gave the
text a kind informality and colloquial feel to it; I felt a real connection to
Malala herself on account of this narrative style. When I went back to an
English copy, it suddenly seemed so much more formal and straight laced. As
you said, these _pseudo-sentences_ (my word, not yours) in Japanese created a
kind of drama of their own that I felt was unfortunately lacking from the
pages of the English text.

At any rate, as you can see, despite what I've written above I'm still kind of
clinging to your idea of a "strictly speaking" proper sentence--that is, it
needs a subject and predicate.

So, in summary, I would say that perhaps 文 and _sentence_ aren't exactly
equivalent terms.

Addendum: as I think about this some more, it occurs to me that the difference
may be one of orthography too. Odd as it may sound, I thought of this when
thinking of lines of Chinese poetry a written in groups of 4 or 5 characters.
Yet, they seem to form a unit. Would they be called 文? I haven't studied
Chinese so I can't really say. I have studied Sanskrit though, and in
something like the Bhagavad Gita the defining unit is the meter of the shloka
(verse). At any rate, what I'm suggesting is that the visual (or aural, in the
case of Sanskrit) presentation of the text itself is perhaps what originates
the meaning of the word 文 or _sentence_.

Interestingly, my 漢和中辞典 gives one of the meanings of 文 as
ことば。また、ことばが集まってまとまった意味を表わすもの。Additionally, the Japanese dictionary on my Mac
would seem to define 文 as a unit of meaning. So, I'd say again, this seems to
suggest that the two (文 and sentence) are not quite equivalent. 文 seems to be
defined semantically whereas sentence seems to be defined grammatically. So
there will be a substantial overlap between the two, but certainly not every
complete semantical unit will necessary be a so-called complete grammatical
structure warranting the name "sentence".




When I went to school (K12 in the US during the 70's and early 80's), I was
taught that a sentence had to have a subject and a predicate (usually they
said _verb_ instead of _predicate_ ). But then what exactly are things like
"Hello!"

Broadly speaking, what I was taught works very well for formally written,
academic, and business English. But often when I write in my journal or even
when writing comments on students papers, the style I write in is a rather
abbreviated form omitting subjects or occasionally verbs. Yet, what I write is
still punctuated, and for want of a better word, I would most likely call them
sentences despite the fact that they don't line up with what I was taught.

I think for me what I would call a sentence is something that is recognizable
as a complete thought. So in grading a paper, I might write in the margin
"poor word choice". I think that expresses a whole thought but I wouldn't be
surprised that some would be pedantic enough to argue it's not a proper
sentence.

Today I dropped by my local 紀伊国屋 and picked up a copy of マララ. First I was
struck by how different it reads in Japanese from English. It made me wonder
what the original text was written in. But more to the point, I noticed that
many of the _sentences_ in the Japanese translation just weren't really what I
would have thought of as sentences. They just seemed to end with out a verb.
Sometimes they just ended at what felt like mid-sentence. Yet, the text was
perfectly understandable. I knew what the author was saying. And it gave the
text a kind informality and colloquial feel to it; I felt a real connection to
Malala herself on account of this narrative style. When I went back to an
English copy, it suddenly seemed so much more formal and straight laced. As
you said, these _pseudo-sentences_ (my word, not yours) in Japanese created a
kind of drama of their own that I felt was unfortunately lacking from the
pages of the English text.

At any rate, as you can see, despite what I've written above I'm still kind of
clinging to your idea of a "strictly speaking" proper sentence--that is, it
needs a subject and predicate.

So, in summary, I would say that perhaps 文 and _sentence_ aren't exactly
equivalent terms.

Addendum: as I think about this some more, it occurs to me that the difference
may be one of orthography too. Odd as it may sound, I thought of this when
thinking of lines of Chinese poetry a written in groups of 4 or 5 characters.
Yet, they seem to form a unit. Would they be called 文? I haven't studied
Chinese so I can't really say. I have studied Sanskrit though, and in
something like the Bhagavad Gita the defining unit is the meter of the shloka
(verse). At any rate, what I'm suggesting is that the visual (or aural, in the
case of Sanskrit) presentation of the text itself is perhaps what originates
the meaning of the word 文 or _sentence_.

Interestingly, my 漢和中辞典 gives one of the meanings of 文 as
ことば。また、ことばが集まってまとまった意味を表わすもの。Additionally, the Japanese dictionary on my Mac
would seem to define 文 as a unit of meaning. So, I'd say again, this seems to
suggest that the two (文 and sentence) are not quite equivalent. 文 seems to be
defined semantically whereas sentence seems to be defined grammatically. So
there will be a substantial overlap between the two, but certainly not every
complete semantical unit will necessary be a so-called complete grammatical
structure warranting the name "sentence".

