The question is clear. Can "Wow!" be a sentence?
Imagine a hypothetical context where I'd utter something like this:
Wow! What an amazing idea! I should think about a way to push this fix.
We see "wow" in casual speech often. It bears punctuation marks (typically an exclamation mark, denoting the rising intonation) and a capital letter — just like all "regular" sentences.
On the other hand, neither Wow! nor What an amazing idea! contain any verbs. These certainly don't have any parts of speech in the other sentence, so what are they? Are they sentences or clauses? In other words, can "Wow!" be a sentence despite its lack of [any implied] verbs, and subsequently lack of any distinguishable predicates?
Please back up your answers with references.
Answer
This question is anything but clear. It's muddled by design. :^) But I'll take a shot at it.
NOAD defines sentence like this:
sentence (n.) a set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation, or command, and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clauses. (emphasis added)
The word "typically" is crucial; it suggests that the subject and predicate are not "required." Therefore:
Wow!
is a grammatical, legal, legitmate one-word exclamation sentence, consisting of a lone interjection.
For further reading, I recommend taking a look at this answer to a similar question on ELU.
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