М. В. Ломоносова Филологический факультет Кафедра английского языкознания Когезия и когеренция в философском дискурсе на материале эссе Бертрана Расселла "О природе знакомства". Курсовая
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Ellipsis.The concept of ellipsis.Ellipsis is closely related to substitution in the sense that they both represent a relation “between words or groups or clauses, and not between meanings”. M. Halliday defines ellipsis as “substitution by zero” (both citations — Halliday and Hasan 1976). Szczegielniak (2018) gives a general definition for ellipsis which is considered by scholars from myriads of perspectives in the following way: “Ellipsis is a construction whose phonological form is missing relative to the form that construction should have considering the meaning it denotes”. An elliptic omission is possible when something is understood without mentioning it, or, rather, “goes without saying” (Halliday and Hasan 1976 p. 142). It is based on a typical feature of any sentence — namely, that “there is always a great deal more evidence to the hearer for interpreting a sentence than is contained in the sentence itself” (Halliday and Hasan 1976). Both of the previously described forms of cohesion introduce a situation when the hearer has to add some information to the one given by the actual form of a sentence which is grammatically complete. On the contrary, in ellipsis nothing is inserted into the slot (Halliday and Hasan 1976), for example: Bill should collect butterflies. Jill should, too. (Taken from Merchant 2010.) Here a verb and its direct object are omitted (Jill should collect butterflies, too). Specifying the functional features of elliptic constructions, we follow, as we have done all along, the classification introduced by Halliday and Hasan (1976). However unlikely it may seem that we can come across coherence-relevant (see ilid. p. 174) instances of ellipsis in written discourse, we will give a brief description of it based on above-mentioned fundamental work. Nominal ellipsis.Nominal ellipsis is ellipsis within the nominal group (Halliday and Hasan 1976 p. 147). It is always the head of a nominal group that is omitted in nominal ellipsis. It is important to note that from the three possible types of the head (namely common noun, proper noun and a pronoun) only proper nouns are “prone” to elliptic omission (ibid. p. 147). Every time when the head of a nominal group is missing, one of its dependent parts becomes the head. Because of this, a part of unstable compound can not be omitted: the other part would become the head itself and this would change the meaning completely (ibid. p. 148). Presupposition of nominal elements.Within the nominal group any elements can be missed and ellipsis is not necessarily the one in which the noun is omitted (Halliday and Hasan 1976 p. 150). In fact, any nominal element can become a presupposed one: 1: Here are my two white silk scarves. 2a: Where are yours? (your two white silk scarves) 2b: I used to have three. (white silk scarves) 2c: Can you see any black? (silk scarves) 2d: Or would you prefer the cotton? (scarves) Therefore, there is a general rule that a nominal element can be presupposed in ellipsis only if it comes after the head of the elliptical group (ibid. p. 151). But not all nominal elements after the head of the elliptical group are necessarily presupposed. Their presupposition depends on extralinguistic context (ibid. p. 152). Types of nominal ellipsis.There are two most characteristic instances of ellipsis, which are those with a common noun or numeral as head. Others include instances with adjectives and unstable compounds parts which are rather rare (ibid. p. 155). Specific deictics. The two subtypes of deixis — specific and non-specific deictics — are differentiated on the basis of the oppostiton “deictic vs post-deictic elements”. This approach has grown out from M. Halliday’s work in the sphere of Systemic Functional Linguistics and, on the one hand, is closely related to cognitive approach (Kavalir 2017), and on the other hand it seems to reconcile the two opposing approaches to ellipsis that have split scholarly research in this field into two camps, namely, structural and semantic-pragmatic approaches (Ticio 2016). Specific and non-specific deictics are distinguished in accordance with the type of the deictic element. Specific deictics are represented by nouns in their possessive form, possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and the (Halliday and Hasan 1976). Possessive nouns and pronouns are notable for having the property to indicate ellipsis every time they are the head of a nominal group. Non-specific deictics Non-specific deictics are each, every, any, either, no, neither, a, and some. Among them all occur as Head of the elliptical group except every, either, neither, and both presuppose a two sets, and each can presuppose both a pair and a group formed of more than two entities (ibid. p. 158). Post-deictics Post-deictics are called so because they usually come immediately after the deictic element in elliptical group: A group of well-dressed young men suddenly appeared on the stage. One of them bowed to the audience; the others stood motionless. (rf. Halliday and Hasan 1976) Post deictics are adjectives (which are not to be confused with adjectives used for characteristic of a noun), among which the most common are: other, same, different, identical, usual, regular, certain, odd, famous, well-known, typical, obvious (ilid. p. 159). Numeratives By numeratives here ordinals, cardinals, and indefinite quantifiers are meant. All of them can function as Head of the nominal group being at the same time post-deictic: Have another chocolate. — No, thanks. That was my third. (rf. ilid. p. 161) Epithets Following M. Halliday’s terminology, an epithet is a qualitative attribute within the nominal group, and is realized by an adjective (or participial verb form), which is frequently submodified by adverbs of degree such as very, extremely, greatly, including the comparative adverbs as; more, most; less, least; too (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). Epithets are not common to occur as Head in the elliptical nominal group. The most frequent instances are the ones with colours (and some other semantic subtypes of adjectives), comparatives and superlatives. Superlatives are often preceded by deictic definite article or possessive similarly to numerals (ilid. p. 163). |