Ellipsis

12 Key excerpts on "Ellipsis"

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  Ellipsis in English Literature

  Signs of Omission

  • Anne Toner(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  But it also is a sign of basic linguistic competence. We demonstrate our facility in a language by being able to produce and interpret sentence-fragments. 19 As has already been suggested, this occurs in rapid exchanges of dialogue. But linguistic com- petence depends on our use of Ellipsis in the grammatical sense. ‘Ellipsis’ in grammar means the unmarked omission of words. Our sentences are constantly subject to elisions so that they are more direct and economical. The elided elements do not have to be intimated in any way, not even brought to mind, for the purposes of comprehension. This is so pervasive to our language use that Ellipsis occurs invisibly in the most common exchanges, in formal and informal language and in written and spoken forms. This last sentence shows Ellipsis facilitating more efficient listing by minimizing repetition (‘that Ellipsis occurs in formal [language] and infor- mal language [and that Ellipsis occurs] in written [forms] and spoken forms’). The simple rejoinder ‘yes’ is understood grammatically as eliding a subject and predicate (‘Yes, I will do that’). Ellipsis in this sense was also first defined in classical oratory. The word, as translated from the Greek, means to fall short. Quintilian in the Institutio Oratoria describes Ellipsis as the omission of words that can be recovered verbatim by means of contextual information. 20 As with other figures, he warns about its overuse, describing it as a blemish or defect (vitium) that if used only occasionally will give speech a certain charm. 21 6 Introduction: observing the Ellipsis Quintilian points out that the Ellipsis and the aposiopesis, as figures of omission, are similar and often confused. 22 But if the omitted words can be supplied exactly from the context, the omission is an Ellipsis. If the omission is only paraphrasable or is uncertain it is an aposiopesis.

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  Text Linguistics of Qur'anic Discourse

  An Analysis

  • Hussein Abdul-Raof(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Ellipsis in Qur’anic discourse

  4.1 Introduction

  This chapter provides a comprehensive account of the text linguistic mechanism of Ellipsis in Qur’anic discourse. A detailed list of examples will be given to illustrate the three types of Ellipsis and their pragmatic functions. Among the major Ellipsis notions investigated are cataphoric and anaphoric Ellipsis, the four pragmatic functions of Ellipsis, the major types of Ellipsis (nominal Ellipsis and verbal Ellipsis), clausal Ellipsis, the relationship between Ellipsis and micro/macro intertextuality, Ellipsis and presupposition, and contextual Ellipsis. The sentences between brackets () represent non-elliptical (Ellipsis-free) sentences and are non-Qur’anic. The presupposed ellipted elements are placed between curly brackets {}.

  4.2 What is Ellipsis?

  Ellipsis is a Greek word meaning ‘to leave out’. Thus, Ellipsis is related to any word or phrase omitted from the sentence in order to avoid redundancy and produce an effective text structure. Ellipsis is a cohesive device which has a lexico-grammatical relation in which a word or a phrase is specified through the use of a grammatical signal, indicating that this word or phrase is to be recovered from what has gone before, i.e., to be retrieved from the preceding text (Halliday and Hasan 1976:308; Salkie 1995:57). In other words, Ellipsis is the leaving out of a word or a phrase instead of repeating the same word or phrase. Thus, there is a gap, but as readers, we can make sense of the ellipted (left out) items through the background information which we derive from the same, i.e., the previous, text or from the subsequent text we are reading. Therefore, Ellipsis is a form of anaphoric and cataphoric cohesion where we presuppose something by means of what is implied or unsaid.

  Ellipsis is a form of presupposition. In other words, it is a tool to specify someone/something through referring it to someone/something:

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  On Invisible Language in Modern English

  A Corpus-based Approach to Ellipsis

  • Evelyn Gandón-Chapela(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  to ); the existence of auxiliary(ies) before the licensor; the type of syntactic linking established between the antecedent and the Ellipsis site (coordination, subordination, etc.); the syntactic domain where Ellipsis occurs (matrix, subordinate clause, etc.); the category of the antecedent and that of the elided material (NP, VP, AP, etc.); the existence of split antecedents; the types of remnants attested in PG (classified by category and syntactic function); and, finally, auxiliary-related variables such as polarity, voice, aspect, modality and tense. Second, the semantic/discursive variables analysed include the type of clause attested in the antecedents and in the Ellipsis sites (declarative, interrogative and imperative); the type of anaphora (anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric); the type of focus (subject choice, auxiliary choice, object choice, etc.); the existence of sloppy identity, and the type of turn (i.e. whether there is a change of speaker or not). Third, I have paid attention to usage variables such as the distribution of PAE constructions by period (eighteenth and roughly nineteenth centuries) and genre (speech-related vs. writing-related genres). Finally, I have also analysed processing variables such as the lexical distance (in number of words) and the syntactic distance (in number of clauses) existing between the antecedent and the Ellipsis site in PAE constructions.

  1.2 State of the art

  The term ‘Ellipsis’ (from Greek ἔλλειψις, élleipsis , ‘omission’), as it is conceived in current linguistic research, refers to structures in which expected syntactic elements are missing in certain constructions, creating a mismatch between meaning (the intended message) and sound (what is in fact uttered). Put differently, Ellipsis is an instance of indirect mapping between meaning and form.

  Ellipsis is nowadays studied with respect to the syntactic structures, the contexts and the discourse conditions in which it is attested. Thus, modern linguistics is mainly concerned with the description and establishment of all the different criteria for the use of Ellipsis, providing the rules that license its occurrence. As Sundby et al. (1991 : 241) point out, ‘in modern linguistics, Ellipsis hinges on the rules specifying the conditions for its use, and the term is most frequently used in describing complex sentence structures, particularly coordination.’ Over the past fifty years, the ‘mechanism’ of Ellipsis has become a central issue of debate for researchers working on semantics, syntax, pragmatics, psycholinguistics and corpus linguistics, as will be shown. The notion of Ellipsis is discussed in great detail not only in the comprehensive grammars of English such as Quirk et al. (1985) , Biber et al. (1999) and Huddleston and Pullum (2002

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  Academic Writing and Research across Disciplines in Africa

  From Students to Experts

  • (Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cuvillier Verlag

    (Publisher)

  Aelbretch (2010: 1) defines Ellipsis as “[…] the omission of elements that are inferable from the context” and notes that Ellipsis “constitutes a mismatch between sound and meaning.” She goes further to state that “when one utters an elliptical sentence, its interpretation is richer than what is actually pronounced”. Vujevic (2014: 414) states that “[...] as a general principle of Ellipsis, we can say that Ellipsis occurs when something of a structural importance is left out, and when there is a sense of incompleteness associated with that omitted item”. This means that an elliptic form must be grammatically defective. Lobeck (1995: 20ff) goes further to distinguish Ellipsis from gapping and concludes that it is possible to claim that VP-Ellipsis, Ellipsis in NP, and Sluicing form a natural class of phenomena distinct from Gapping” (ibid: 24). She adopts Jackendoff’s (1971) restrictions on Ellipsis, which state that a. An Ellipsis can be phrase-final. b. An Ellipsis can occur in a coordinate or a subordinate clause separate from that containing its antecedent. c. An Ellipsis can precede its antecedent under certain conditions. d. An Ellipsis must be a phrase. The restriction on (d) above leaves the impression that, for something to qualify as Ellipsis, it must be structured by being a phrase. However, Hardt (1993), in arguing that VP-Ellipsis is a pro-form, demonstrates that Ellipsis sites lack syntactic structure. Weir (2016: 3) in discussing his left-edge Ellipsis in spoken English concludes that the elided material and the remnant are “not sensitive to syntactic constituency”. This, he argues, are conditioned by the Strong Start Constraint, in which speakers avoid beginning a sentence with weak syllables. The constraint states that “An intonational phrase should not have at its left edge an immediate Dieses Werk ist copyrightgeschützt und darf in keiner Form vervielfältigt werden noch an Dritte weitergegeben werden. Es g ilt nur für den persönlichen Gebrauch.

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  Mind The Gap

  Ellipsis and Stylistic Variation in Spoken and Written English

  • Peter Wilson(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Accordingly, at this point they are making sure that there is no uncertainty about the basic storyline of the film. CHAPTER 2 WHAT ISN’T Ellipsis Our preliminary look at Ellipsis in Chapter 1 suggested that the absence of structurally potential linguistic elements is a pervasive feature of language. Language allows, indeed facilitates, gaps that speakers use and interpret, mostly in the relatively unexamined give and take of everyday communication, but sometimes for more deliberate effect. We saw that a wide range of seemingly different features figure in this general notion of Ellipsis, while noting that some missing elements, in abbreviations, contracted forms and the like, could hardly count as Ellipsis at all. Such elements are of minor significance, but they prompt a more interesting line of enquiry, that has both theoretical and practical implications, as to what kinds of gaps are best treated as Ellipsis and what, if any, can be discounted. The main aim of this chapter, therefore, will be to illustrate certain kinds of linguistic omission and absence that have something superficially in common with Ellipsis, but which can be explained more satisfactorily in other ways. Some may be considered accidental in the sense that they are syntactically and/or situationally unmotivated. Others are semantic in origin or related to the contextually motivated inferences of language in use. All these features are interesting and significant in their own right, so my aim in discounting them is not to belittle their importance as properties of discourse, but rather to suggest some necessary delimitations to the range of features that are best treated within a framework of Ellipsis as I have defined it

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  The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory

  • Shalom Lappin, Chris Fox(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  And even the act achieved by such fragments may not be fully determined, for example, a single fragment may be able to function simultaneously as the completion of a question and the provision of an answer: (12) A: Should I put it back on the shelf, or on ... B: the table. If then we are to provide a characterization of Ellipsis across the span of variation, we must be able to model not only how overt Ellipsis indicators such as do so license recovery of an inter- pretation from context, not only the way in which fragments depend on their function within a context as to how they are to be construed, but also the way they can extend what others offer in a conversation. The challenge of modeling Ellipsis as a phenomenon in its own right is, then, the task of providing a formal account that is sufficiently rich to match the huge variety of types of construal, and yet sufficiently general to constitute an explanation. Ellipsis 117 2. Meeting the Ellipsis Challenge 2.1 Syntactic approaches to Ellipsis There is an intuitive first step in attempting to provide a theoretical account of Ellipsis: one can start with the assumption that Ellipsis occurs when the speaker, as a means of economy or some other reason, does not wish to repeat the words/phrases that have already been used. Leaving aside the characterization of the full set of dialogue data, 2 seeing Ellipsis as a strategy achieving econ- omy of expression has led to analyses involving the (phonological) deletion of syntactic structure at the Ellipsis site, under identity with structure in the antecedent clause (Chomsky, 1995; Lasnik, 1995; Merchant, 2004; Sag, 1976; Williams, 1977). Alternatively, other syntactic accounts have pos- tulated rules that reconstruct the structure of the antecedent at the Ellipsis site (Fiengo and May, 1994; Lappin, 1999).

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  New Guinea and Neighboring Areas

  A Sociolinguistic Laboratory

  • Stephen A. Wurm(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  RDP introduces problems of Ellipsis and elision, somewhat associated notions, and the problems of distinguishing between grammatical and con-textual completeness. Ellipsis is a type of linguistic deletion in which some shorter form substi-tutes for a longer version of the same utterance. Lyons (1968:174-175) points out that, 'One must distinguish between contextual completeness and gram-matical completeness.' So an utterance like 'John's, if he gets here in time' (which may occur in response to a question such as 'Whose car are we going in?') is grammatically incomplete. Reconstituting it in the literary mode involves provision of all appropriate contextual information (such as the question which elicited the elliptical response) and represents therefore a problem of pragmatics rather than grammar. RDP is not concerned with this kind of editing, but rather with problems of grammatical completeness. Linguists who in recent years have wanted to relegate editing and associated problems to the realm of pragmatics, have, like many traditional grammarians, 'failed to distinguish between grammatical and contextual completeness'. Structural linguists similarly obscured this dis-tinction, emphasizing the correct but irrelevant point that, since all elliptical utterances are comprehensible to the intended hearer, they cannot be declared to be 'incomplete' (Lyons 1968:174). In contrast to the previous example, Lyons cites 'Got the tickets?' as an example of grammatical Ellipsis. John's, if he gets here in time is grammatically incomplete. On the other hand Got the tickets? ... is a sentence (and in that sense it is 'complete'); the Ellipsis that is involved 144 Raymond Leslie Johnston in its derivation from the alternative version of the same sentence Have you got the tickets? is purely a matter of grammar and is independent of the wider context.

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  The Architecture of Focus

  • Valéria Molnár, Susanne Winkler, Valéria Molnár, Susanne Winkler(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Ellipsis at the interfaces: An information-structural proposal Susanne Winkler Abstract Most linguists working in the generative framework today agree that el-lipsis is an interface phenomenon. However, the question as to the actual division of labor between the components is far from clear. The present paper investigates the following question: How do the components of grammar divide up the work between them so that in the end all that needs to be said is nothing ? The central claim is that there are two types of ellipses in English, one sentence-bound and the other discourse-bound, and that their different syntactic derivations correlate with their specific information-structural functions. In particular, I will argue against the traditional two-interface hypothesis, providing evidence from the interaction of focus and Ellipsis which seems to reflect a richer flow of information between the modules. I propose a model of grammar in which the information-structural component plays a crucial role in dis-tinguishing between functionally driven and syntactically driven Ellipsis. 0. Introduction In this paper, I explore the syntax and information structure of a subset of the set of elliptical constructions in English given in (la) to (If)· (1) a. Manny plays the piano and Anna the flute. b. Manny plays the piano but Anna doesn 't. c. Manny plays the piano and Anna does the flute. d. Manny plays the piano and Anna, too. e. Someone's playing the piano but I don't know who. f. Manny played a solo with one hand and Anna with two. 402 Susanne Winkler The term Ellipsis is derived from the Greek elleipsis, falling short, and most generally refers to the omission of linguistic material, structure and sound. In each of the elliptical constructions in (la) to (If) linguistic material is omitted, deleted or simply left unpronounced.

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  Semantics - Sentence and Information Structure

  • Paul Portner, Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger, Paul Portner, Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Similarly, the string Kathleen Ingo Reich, Saarbrücken, Germany 9 Ellipsis 307 a blueberry muffin in (2), a sequence of two noun phrases, conveys the complete thought or proposition that Kathleen orders a blueberry muffin. (1) Tall decaf cappuccino. (2) Joe orders a cappuccino, and Kathleen a blueberry muffin. Data like (1) and (2) thus teach us that non- or subsentential expressions may very well be used to convey a complete thought or proposition, provided that the addressee is (known to be) in a position to somehow resolve the missing parts of information. This phenomenon is generally known under the label “Ellipsis” (from greek élleipsis , “omission”). 1.1 Delimiting Ellipsis The main characteristic of Ellipsis thus is that in a given utterance or construction relevant parts (of information) are omitted (by the speaker), and have to be sup-plemented (by the hearer). Without any further qualifications this coarse charac-terization of Ellipsis covers both the omission of the object das (“it”) in (3) and the missing (indefinite) object in (4a). (3) ( Was für ein Handy! ) Muss ich unbedingt haben! (what for a cell-phone! ) must I at-all-costs have! ‘(What a cell phone! ) I must have it, at all costs!’ (4) a. Sie aß stundenlang. / She ate for hours. b. *Er trägt stundenlang. / *He carries for hours. There are good reasons to draw a line between (3) and (4a), however: In (4a), the possibility of dropping the object hinges on lexical properties of the selecting predicate; cf. (4b). (3), on the other hand, illustrates a more general phenome-non, topic drop in German (cf. Fries 1988; Cardinaletti 1991). Topic drop sys-tematically targets pronouns within the “prefield” (the position preceding the fronted verb in main clauses) and thus is structurally rather than lexically con-strained (cf. (3) to *Ich muss unbedingt haben! ).

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  Product

  • Susanne Winkler, Sam Featherston, Susanne Winkler, Sam Featherston(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Explorations in Ellipsis: The grammar and processing of silence Lyn Frazier 1. Introduction The grammar of Ellipsis has been an exciting focus of linguistic research for a considerable time starting in the 1970s (Chao 1988, Grinder and Postal 1971, Hankamer and Sag, 1976, Sag 1976, Sag and Hankamer 1984, Webber 1978, Williams 1977) and continuing to the present (Dalrymple et al. 1991, Hardt 1993, Hardt and Romero 2004, Johnson 2008, Lobeck 1995, Merchant 2001, 2005, 2008a,b, Schwabe and Winkler 2003, Sheiber, Pereira and Dalrymple 1999, among many others). Many insightful approaches have been developed. The present paper provides an overview of an ongoing project with my colleague Charles Clifton designed to develop a theory of processing Ellipsis. It also ex-amines the implications of this processing theory for grammatical theories of Ellipsis. Crucially it will be assumed that it is the overall theory of language, the gram-mar plus theories of performance, that must account for linguistic intuitions. In other words, though linguistic intuitions form an important form of evidence about the grammar, those intuitions basically tell us whether a sentence sounds “good” (acceptable) or not. The notions “grammatical” or “ungrammatical” are not pre-theoretic but rather the consequence of devising a theory of language. Thus classifying sentences as grammatical/ungrammatical is the result of con-structing the most explanatory overall theory of language, including a theory of grammar and theories of performance. This paper will focus on the kinds of Ellipsis that can cross sentence bound-aries, primarily Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE), illustrated in (1), and Sluicing, illustrated in (2). (1) Josh laughed. Bella did too. (2) Lucy bought something. But I don’t know what [ ] . VPE elides a verb phrase following an auxiliary, not or to . In Sluicing, an in-terrogative clause is elided (Chung, Ladusaw and McCloskey 1995, Merchant 2001 among others).

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  Information Structure and Language Change

  New Approaches to Word Order Variation in Germanic

  • Roland Hinterhölzl, Svetlana Petrova, Roland Hinterhölzl, Svetlana Petrova(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  On the “syntax of silence” in Proto-Indo-European Thomas Krisch Abstract Using material from the ancient Indo-European languages Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Hittite and insights of modern linguistic theory, this paper discusses two phenomena of Ellipsis: gapping and object Ellipsis. Both kinds of Ellipsis are shown to be operative in these languages and can be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Gapping appears in the two variants of forward and backward gapping in the languages discussed. In accordance with observations in literature using generative theory, which tell us that backward gapping is only possi-ble in SOV languages, we conclude that backward gapping is a further piece of evidence for an underlying SOV structure of these languages and of Proto-Indo-European. The fact that there exists forward gapping in all of the languages discussed is interpreted as a reflex of a V-to-C movement. Overt V-to-C-movement is only attested in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit and not in Hittite, though. This fact is interpreted as a Hittite innovation, for-ward gapping being a remnant of Proto-Indo-European V-to-C-movement in this language. Object Ellipsis operates in forward direction and depends on factors of functional sentence perspective. 1. Introduction 1 This paper deals with some aspects of the “syntax of silence” (Ellipsis) in Indo-European. There are not many investigations into this phenomenon for ancient Indo-European languages and also for modern languages there is still much work to be done. During the last decades, Generative Gram-mar, though, has made some substantial contributions to our understanding of Ellipsis where it is syntactically conditioned. The moderate aims of the present paper are to discuss some theoretical issues, to describe some phe-nomena appearing in ancient Indo-European languages (AIELs) and to reconstruct some elliptical constructions for Proto- Indo-European (PIE).

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  Context-Dependence, Perspective and Relativity

  • Francois Recanati, Isidora Stojanovic, Neftali Villanueva(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  In such a context, certain particular linguistic phrases can be expected: they are “given”, though not by the immediate actually spoken linguistic precedents, but rather by mutual knowledge of the script being followed. If Marco stands in the middle of a square and shouts “To Segovia!”, we have a hard time construing his utterance (as hard as we try, it is difficult to construe this as an instruction that we take him to Segovia); the same phrase on entering a taxi is perfectly understandable. This is why, in exactly such constrained, scripted circumstances, we also find regular elliptical structures such as sluicing, as in (68b). 14 The sluicing case is illuminating, and raises the same set of questions: does it make sense to claim that there is syntactic Ellipsis in such cases? If so, can it be determined exactly what it being elided, and why is such “surface” anaphora (in Hankamer and Sag’s 1976 sense) licensed with no linguistic antecedent? If not, what is going on? The idea behind the use of the script is that there is a conventionally determined (syntactic) sentential expression which is used in some reduced form, but where the reduction is not licensed Three types of Ellipsis 181 by regular grammatical mechanisms for (syntactic) Ellipsis (such as E or its equivalent), but is more similar to just reading “prompts” for lines to an actor. If both parties aren’t familiar with the script, the prompt will fail. No general mechanism is used in these cases, and that’s why they can and do have sensitivities to linguistic form: those forms found in the (linguistic part of the) script. Is this idea incoherent? Stainton claims that the notion of script is irrelevant since “surely it is the speaker, not her grammar, that determines which script is in play” ( n ).

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