I was helping a friend write a paper and came across a sentence which confused me.
The sentence was something along the lines of:
Horrifying consequences inflicted upon innocent people.
As soon as I read this, I knew it was a fragment, but could not describe why. I can distill it down to:
Consequences inflicted.
and from there it seems to follow that there is a subject (the consequences) and a past-tense verb (inflicted). In my mind, it is no different from the sentence:
Icicles melted.
I am fairly sure that the latter is a complete sentence whereas the former is not, but both seem to have a past-tense verb and a plural noun. I would love if somebody could shed a little more light on the situation. Thanks in advance.
Best Answer
It's a fragment because there is no required auxiliary verb.
For instance:
This is a valid passive sentence, along the same lines as:
In this sentence, broken is an adjective. (In the previous sentence, inflicted is acting as an adjective.)
In another construction, inflicted can be used without an auxiliary verb, but it requires an object.
In your second sentence, the intransitive verb melted doesn't require an auxiliary verb:
Although extremely short, those are all still sentences with a subject and a validly constructed intransitive verb.