Ellipsis

In linguistics, ellipsis (from the Greek: ἔλλειψις, élleipsis, "omission") or elliptical construction refers to the omission from a clause of one or more words that would otherwise be required by the remaining elements.^[1][2]

Overview

Varieties of ellipsis have long formed a central explicandum for linguistic theory, since elliptical phenomena seem to be able to shed light on basic questions of form-meaning correspondence: in particular, the usual mechanisms of grasping a meaning from a form seem to be bypassed or supplanted in the interpretation of elliptical structures, ones in which there is meaning without form.

In generative linguistics, the term ellipsis has been applied to a range of phenomena in which a perceived interpretation is fuller than that which would be expected based solely on the presence of linguistic forms. Central examples drawn from English include sluicing as in (1), Verb Phrase ellipsis (VP-ellipsis) as in (2), and noun phrase ellipsis (NP-ellipsis or N’-ellipsis) as in (3).

(1) John can play something, but I don’t know what.

(2) John can play the guitar; Mary can, too.

(3) John can play five instruments, and Mary can play six.

In each case, the second clause can be understood as in (4)-(6).

(4) John can play something, but I don’t know what John can play.

(5) John can play the guitar and Mary can play the guitar, too.

(6) John can play five instruments, and Mary can play six instruments.

These three kinds of ellipsis are distinguished as well by the fact that distributional facts lead us to expect to find structural elements corresponding to the perceived interpretations: wh-phrases as in (1) require clausal sources, modals like can in (2) take VP complements, and determiner-like elements such as six in (3) require NP complements. In other words, selectional and subcategorization properties of particular elements require us to posit elided structures in (1)-(3), if these properties are uniform across the grammar.

Ellipsis has further been invoked in a range of other constructions, such as stripping (or bare argument ellipsis) in (7), gapping in (8), fragment answers in (9), as well as a host of other cases that fall under the general rubric of ‘conjunction reduction’:

(7) John can play the guitar, {and Mary, too/and Mary as well/but not Mary}.

John can play the guitar better than Mary.

(8) John can play the guitar, and Mary the violin.

John can play the guitar better than Mary the violin.

(9) Q: Who can play the guitar?

A: (Not) John.

In addition to these structures, the term 'ellipsis' covers a potential multitude of distinct phenomena as it is used in general parlance, most of which are of little linguistic interest, or whose connection to the types seen above is oblique at best (such as ellipsis).

Some examples of other elliptical phenomena are as follows:

• Example: Jessica had five dollars; Monica, three. (The verb "had" was omitted at the comma).^[3]
• Example: What if I miss the deadline? (The verb phrase "will happen" was omitted, as in "What will happen if I miss the deadline").^[4]
• Example: Fire when ready. (In the sentence, "you are" is understood, as in "Fire when you are ready.").^[1]

See also

• English grammar, "Ellipsis" section: a comprehensive list of examples of various forms of ellipsis.
• collapsing sequences
• ellipsis, about the orthographic usage rules for '...'.
• sluicing, ellipsis of the sentential part of a constituent question.
• verb phrase ellipsis, about the elliptical construction in which verb phrases are omitted.

Notes

References

• SIL
• English Plus
• Johnson, Kyle. 2001. What VP ellipsis can do, and what it can’t, but not why. In The handbook of contemporary syntactic theory , ed. Mark Baltin and Chris Collins, 439–479. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• Lappin, Shalom. 1996. The interpretation of ellipsis. In The handbook of contemporary semantic theory, ed. Shalom Lappin. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Lobeck, Ann. 1995. Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing and identification. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Merchant, Jason. 2001. The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands, and the theory of ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Sag, Ivan. 1976. Deletion and logical form. Doctoral Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.