Is Yes A Complete Sentence

"'Aye' is a consummate sentence!" some guy said harshly at the gas station. He was talking (probably on his phone) on the opposite side of the pump, and I couldn't get a skillful wait at the guy without making information technology obvious that I was eavesdropping while preparing to fill up up my gas tank. I kept my blank face and made sure non to wait in the guy'south direction. He sounded angry, but he wasn't aroused at me, and I meant to go along it that style.

I'thousand a pretty adept eavesdropper. Eavesdropping was an of import skill when I was a instructor. I usually gave students a significant chunk of fourth dimension each class menstruum to work with a partner or a group of friends on an assignment. The group time gave students a chance to accident off steam while (theoretically) doing something productive, and it gave me a run a risk to walk around the classroom and accept informal interactions with students. A lot of times I'd just stand back and heed (and pretend to grade papers).

I learned more than well-nigh what was going on around schoolhouse and with students from my eavesdropping than I did from all the essays that they wrote for my classes. I'one thousand pretty good at hanging around and being unnoticed, even when I'm supposed to be in a leadership position like teaching. I could teach a form on eavesdropping and its uses in the classroom. Or possibly I could write a book about it.

"'No' is a consummate sentence!" the guy at the gas pump continued.

The guy sounded confident, merely the former English teacher in me wasn't so sure. Past itself, the word 'yes' can be an interjection, a noun, an adverb, and even a verb, though that'southward extremely rare. A part of spoken language by itself can't be a complete judgement… unless… unless the 'yes' was meant as an implied complete judgement. Maybe you could make the instance that 'yes' is an implied complete sentence if it's following a question.

For example, if a wife asks, "Are yous listening?" the married man's automatic response is normally "Aye," even though there was a fifty% chance that the husband wasn't listening. In that situation the word 'yes' by itself implies the sentence "I was listening." That was an interesting idea, I thought, if that were indeed what that guy meant when he'd said that the word 'yes,' was a consummate sentence. I don't necessarily concur with it, simply it'south at to the lowest degree interesting.

"I don't need to say 'ma'am," The guy continued. "I don't demand to say 'sir'!"

This changes things, I thought. Did this guy think that the difference between a consummate sentence and an incomplete thought was the discussion 'sir' or 'ma'am'? Y'all have to take a discipline and a verb to have a complete sentence, and calculation 'ma'am' or 'sir' adds neither. The guy sounded pissed, so I wasn't nigh to insert myself into the conversation to hash out grammar. Nobody wants to talk about grammar.

I might be a erstwhile English instructor and someday I might write an educational book about eavesdropping in the classroom, but I'one thousand definitely not going to write a book about grammar.

Or mayhap I volition.

"It's a southern thing, and I'm not from here," the guy connected ranting.

Information technology's kind of a southern affair, I idea, but non exclusively southern. Before I moved to this southern city, I had lived in a small midwestern city for most of my life. The 'ma'am' and 'sir' affair was big up there also. People were very polite. I mean, they were polite until they weren't, so things could go ugly very apace, and certain people could get from genial to genocidal in a glimmer.

"I'm non gonna say 'sir,' and I'one thousand non gonna say 'ma'am.'" I don't do that."

So he's talking to somebody who thinks calculation the word 'sir' or 'ma'am' is a big deal. When I was a kid, my parents made a big bargain about treating adults with respect, but I'thousand pretty indiscriminate with my utilize of 'sir' and 'ma'am' now. It'southward based more on my mood than somebody else's status. I don't expect to be called 'sir' either If an developed told me to my face (or on the phone) that I had to telephone call him/her 'sir' or 'ma'am,' I might flip out likewise, though I'm normally not confrontational in public.

I resisted the urge to await when I heard the guy become into his machine. I'd fabricated it this far without looking, I wasn't going to ruin information technology at the stop, but I really wanted to await at the guy. I had and then many unanswered questions: Who was he talking to? What had gear up him off? Was it a boss? A girlfriend? A beau? A combination? What had fifty-fifty caused this conversation in the beginning place? What were this guy's issues?

I had my own issues, I realized. I hadn't even started pumping my own gas yet.