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Ellipsis

Ellipsis is a typical phenomenon, in conversation, arising out of the situation. We mentioned this peculiar feature of the spoken language when we characterized its essential qualities and properties.

But this typical feature of the spoken language assumes a new quality when used in the written language. It becomes a stylistic device, inasmuch as it supplies supersegmental information. An elliptical sentence in direct intercourse is not a stylistic device. It is simply a norm of the spoken language.

Let us take a few examples.

"So Justice Oberwaltzer — solemnly and didactically from his high seat to the jury." (Dreiser)

One feels very acutely the absence of the predicate in this sentence. Why was it omitted?. Did the author pursue any special purpose in leaving out a primary member of the sentence? Or is it just due to carelessness? The answer is obvious: it is a deliberate device. This particular model of sentence suggests the author's personal state of mind, viz: his indignation at the shameless speech of the Justice. It is a common fact that any excited state of mind will manifest itself in some kind of violation of the recognized literary sentence structure.

Ellipsis, when used as a stylistic device, always 'imitates the common features of colloquial language, where the situation predetermines not the omission of certain members of the sentence, but their absence. It would perhaps be adequate to call sentences lacking certain members "incomplete sentences", leaving the term ellipsis to specify structures where we recognize a digression from the traditional literary sentence structure.

Thus the sentences 'See you to-morrow.', 'Had a good time.', 'Won't do.', 'You say that?' are typical of the colloquial language. Nothing is omitted here. These are normal syntactical structures in the spoken language and to call them elliptical, means to judge every sentence structure according to the structural models of the written language. Likewise such sentences as the following can hardly be called elliptical.

" There ' ssomebodywants to speak to you."

'' Therewasnobreezecame through the open window." (Hemingway)

" There’smanyamaninthisBoroughwouldbeglad to have the blood that runs in my veins." (Cronin)

The relative pronouns who, which, who after 'somebody', 'breeze', 'a man in this Borough' could not be regarded as "omitted" — this is the norm of colloquial language, though now not in frequent use except perhaps with the thereis ( are ) constructions as above. This is due, perhaps, to the standardizing power of the literary language. O. Jespersen, in his analysis of such structures, writes:

"If we speak here of 'omission' or 'subaudition' or 'ellipsis,' the reader is apt to get the false impression that the fuller expression is the better one as being complete, and that the shorter expression is to some extent faulty or defective, or sornething that has come into existence in recent times out of slovenliness. This is wrong: the constructions are very old in the language and have not come into existence through the dropping of a previously necessary relative pronoun."

Here are some examples quoted by Jespersen:

" Ibringhimnewswill raise his drooping spirits."

"...or likethesnowfalls in the river."

"...when at her door aroseaclattermight awake the dead."

However when the reader encounters such structures in literary texts, even though they aim at representing the lively norms of the spoken language, he is apt to regard them as bearing some definite stylistic function. This is due to a psychological effect produced by the relative rarity of the construction, on the one hand, and the nonexpectancy of any strikingly colloquial expression in literary narrative.

It must be repeated here that the most characteristic feature of the written variety of language is amplification which by its very nature is opposite to ellipsis. Amplification generally demands expansion of the ideas with as full and as exact relations between the parts of the utterance as possible. Ellipsis being the property of colloquial language, on the contrary, does not express what can easily be supplied by the situation. This is perhaps the reason that elliptical sentences are rarely used as stylistic devices. Sometimes the omission of a link verb adds emotional colouring and makes the sentence sound more emphatic, as in these lines from Byron:

" Thricehappyhe who, after survey

of the good company, can win a corner."

" Nothingsodifficult as a beginning."

"Denotes howsoftthechin which bears his touch."

It is wrong to suppose that the omission of the link verbs in these sentences is due to the requirements of the rhythm.'

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