Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[wanderer]

The stark recurring image of a shadowy figure, tearing through the woods running from something, or the nonsensical flash of images seemingly without meaning.

Where is the verb????

[lotus]

Hi wanderer,

There is none. There are two subjects, image and flash.


--lotus

[Lorikeet]

Hmm. To me it seems like it isn't a complete sentence. (I guess I need a verb. ).

[wanderer]

So do you guys reckon this sentence is wrong???

[bud]

Wanderer, "tearing through the woods running from something" is an explanatory clause. It's not essential to the structure of the sentence, so let's simplify the sentence by removing it. We're left with:

The stark recurring image of a shadowy figure or the nonsensical flash of images seemingly without meaning.

Let's simplify further by removing the adjectives and "seemingly without meaning." (I'm not sure what to call that phrase, but that is not essential to the structure, either. Nor are the adjectives) We're left with:

The image of a shadowy figure or the flash of images.

Do you have any ideas about what we should do to fix it?

[wanderer]

Dear Bud,

Honestly speaking, I don't have any idea how to fix it.

[bud]

Oh no! That means I have to try, and I'm not sure I can, either!

So is this your sentence or a sentence you saw?.. And you see that it is incomplete, right? You see that it needs a main verb or a final clause?

The main problem that I see is the "or." Why "or" and not "and?" It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

But here we go (anyone feel free to correct me, please):

The image of a shadowy figure or the flash of images will haunt the hunter for a long time.

Then we can add the non-essentails back in:

The stark recurring image of a shadowy figure, or the nonsensical flash of images seemingly without meaning, will haunt the (lurking) hunter for a long time.

And now the last deleted clause:

The stark recurring image of a shadowy figure, tearing through the woods running from something, or the nonsensical flash of images seemingly without meaning, will haunt the lurking hunter for a long time.

Except for the "or" and its incompleteness, it's a pretty interesting sentence. I'd want to keep reading.

I hope that helps at least a little, Wanderer!

[wanderer]

Thanks for your elaborate explanation.

This is a sentence I saw from a magazine

[esl student]

tearing and running are verbs. DUH. I only learning english for short while and i know that.