A sentence without copula

Question

I came across the strange sentence. It is The word 'grammar' can mean very different things to different people - many of them nagative.. Considering what I've been taught in textbooks, it seems that the undelined sentence should require a copula between "many of them" and "negative". That is, many of them (are) negative. Is such a sentence structure general?

BarbaraPA · Accepted Answer

This is a very common construction.

It means (as you probably figured out) that many of the things that 'grammar' can mean to people will be negative things.

You'll meet a lot of people in life - the vast majority good, a few not so much.

We saw so many sights on our trip - each one better than the last.

She has a lot of kids in her class - some already known, the rest new friends in waiting.

Anonymous · Answer

Thanks very much! All the examples you gave are the structures like "Sentence A Dash Sentence B(copula-free)". I wonder whether a sentence without copula is only good in case of such a sentence structure or not.

BarbaraPA · Answer

I wouldn't say what comes after the dash is another sentence. It's just extra information about something earlier in the sentence, though you could think of it as a sentence with the verb omitted, I guess. I can never remember that word - elipted? elided?

Take the sight-seeing sentence. The part after the dash should be understand as "Each [of the sights] [was] more beautiful than the last.

Note too that they all follow the pattern of having "some" or "one" or "most" or "all" or "each" (or other similar pronouns). If you used the actual noun again, the omitted verb would be less likely to occur.

A sentence without copula

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