What makes the so-called "体言止め" to be independent finite sentences? Why can't other languages have such feature?


Maybe this question should also be posted into the linguistic part. In
Japanese a NP/DP like "世界三大唐木の一つとして有名な”黒檀”。(その中でも特に綺麗な...)"may compose a
sentence by itself, and this is impossible in English or many other languages.
Is there any previous syntax studies on this question?




Syntactically, I don't feel like there is something particularly interesting
going on in a noun phrase forming a sentence. Maybe it's more frequent in
Japanese than in English, but that's it. I feel like what's more significant
here is about rhetoric than grammar.

体言止め can be a rhetorical device because Japanese sentences don't normally end
with a noun. They normally end with function words like だ, です, する, た, etc.
Since those function words are a closed set, they can be monotonic especially
when repeated in consecutive sentences. By getting rid of those function words
at the end, you can create variety and vividness.

In a language like English, ending with a noun is not particularly rare and
does not have a rhetorical effect in itself. I don't know if it's rare in many
other languages, but I'd be interested in comparing among head-final languages
(languages that tend have more postpositions than prepositions).

