Where is the verb?
Hello Friends;
I encountered in a text with this sentence:
"Hence, the difficulty in resolving Hilbert's second problem."
It appears in the text as a complete sentence. But I can not find its verb. Where is its verb?
Can you explain its structure to me?
Thanks.
Top answer
It's not a sentence. It doesn't have verb. Consider this simple example of a sentence.
- It's not a sentence.
- It doesn't have verb.
- Consider this simple example of a sentence.
- eg He works outside, hence his suntan.
- It's not unusual to write this as eg He works outside.
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It's not a sentence. It doesn't have verb.
Consider this simple example of a sentence. eg He works outside, hence his suntan.
It's not unusual to write this as eg He works outside. Hence his suntan.
Clive
0You often see incomplete sentences like this in texts. This is an established practice in writing in English. A way to explain this grammatically this is as an elliptical construction, with the complete sentence being something like:
"Hence, the preceding discussion explains the difficulty in resolving Hilbert's second equation."
The words "the preceding discussion e
0Hence, the difficulty in resolving Hilbert's second problem.
The verb is the non-finite participle form "resolving", which has "Hilbert's second problem" as its direct object.
Though it has the form of a phrase, it's actually a case of ellipsis, where the subject pronoun + auxiliary verb is omitted. If the ellipsis were filled out, we might have something like "Henc
0
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