Can "Perhaps" stand on its own as a complete sentence?
I saw this sentence in a passage: Were they using the sun's position in the sky as a marker of time and location? Perhaps.

"Perhaps" is a conjunctive adverb, but a sentence must consist of a subject and a verb. Does that mean this sentence is actually not using standard grammar?

Question

Can "Perhaps" stand on its own as a complete sentence?
I saw this sentence in a passage: Were they using the sun's position in the sky as a marker of time and location? Perhaps.

"Perhaps" is a conjunctive adverb, but a sentence must consist of a subject and a verb. Does that mean this sentence is actually not using standard grammar?

Answer

Hi Johnny,

Yes, 'perhaps' can be used as a single word sentence like in this example. In this example it's an answer to the question the writer is asking himself.

Hope that helps!

Answer

This is another case of word-omission. Here, "perhaps" is a convenient way of shortening "perhaps they were". Once the invisible words are recognized, the sentence follows the rules. The difficult part is to learn to "see" those invisible words; and you can often do that by thinking about what concept is being conveyed by the word(s) that are actually written. Not always, but often.

Answers · 2

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