Wednesday, March 19, 2014

All my friends in one place (verbless clause?)

This clip of the movie 'Goosebumps' starts with the character Slappy saying this:






  1. All my friends in one place. I've never been so happy. I don't want this day to end. And it doesn't have to, as long as we get rid of Stine.




First, I'd like to know if "All my friends in one place" should be treated as a subordinate clause or not. If it should, then the transcript must be:






  1. All my friends in one place, I've never been so happy. I don't want this day to end. And it doesn't have to, as long as we get rid of Stine.




Which of the two is correct?



If (1) is correct, then can a verbless clause be an independent clause?



According to this earlier question and answers, all the examples of verbless clauses are subordinate clauses, and verbless clauses are said to be limited to subordinate clauses.




I have also looked at CGEL (The Cambridge Grammar by Huddleston and Pullum), and all instances of 'verbless clause' there are limited to subordinate clauses, as well.



Is Slappy's sentence a legitimate verbless clause even in the form of (1)?

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