Arsthbt

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.

It's a fragment because there is no required auxiliary verb.

For instance:

✔ Consequences were inflicted.

This is a valid passive sentence, along the same lines as:

✔ The window was broken.

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.

✔ They inflicted themselves on him.

In your second sentence, the intransitive verb melted doesn't require an auxiliary verb:

Icicles melted.

Cars crashed.

They jumped.

Although extremely short, those are all still sentences with a subject and a validly constructed intransitive verb.

After doing a little more research based on some helpful comments, I read about past participles at: https://webapps.towson.edu/ows/verbals.html

A verbal is a word formed from a verb but functioning as a different part of speech.
A participle is a verbal that functions as an adjective.

Past participles, usually ending in -ed or -en, are created from the form of a verb used with the verb to be as an auxiliary verb (passive voice).

For example: The windows were cracked by vandals.

In the example, like in mine, there is a main verb in the past participle form ("windows cracked by vandals"); however, this is not a complete sentence without the auxiliary verb of form "to be". In my example it would be a complete sentence if I added "were" before inflicted.

The difference between "consequences inflicted" and "icicles melted" is that inflicted is functioning as a past participle in this case.