Microsoft Word Theoretical Course of English Grammar

Nino Kirvalidze
102
explicit is elliptical: most messages require some input from the context to make sense of 
them. Ellipsis is distinguished by the structure having some “missing” element.
In face-to-face discourse, the omission of compulsory structural elements in the ut-
terance is predetermined by the physical environment of the communication. For in-
stance, if two people have to peel and fry potatoes and one says to the other “You peel and 
I’ll fry”, the fact that 
peel
and 
fry
are usually transitive verbs requiring an object in the 
surface structure is suspended because the context “supplies” the object. In other words, 
structures are fully realized when they need to be, therefore ellipsis is a choice, made by a 
speaker on a pragmatic assessment of the situation, and not a compulsory feature when 
two clauses are joined together.
In written texts, the “missing” structural element is retrievable from the surround-
ing text (i.e. co-text) in the way that anaphoric and cataphoric references are. For exam-
ple, we meet anaphoric ellipsis in the following sentence – “The children will carry the 
small boxes, the adults - the large ones.” – where the main verb “will carry” is supplied 
from the first clause to the second. In cataphoric ellipsis the missing structural element is 
usually observed only in front-placed subordinate clauses and it can be easily supplied 
from the principle clause. For instance: 
“If you could, I’d like you to be back here at five thirty.” 
There are three main types of ellipsis in English: nominal, verbal and clausal.
a)
Nominal ellipsis often involves omission of a noun headword: Nelly liked the 
green tiles; myself I preferred the blue (
tiles
).
b)
Verbal ellipsis may cause greater problems. Linguists point out two common 
types of verbal ellipsis: echoing and auxiliary contrasting. Echoing repeats an element 
from the verbal group. For instance: 
A:
Will
anyone be waiting? 
B: Jim 
will
, I think.
Contrasting verbal ellipsis is when the auxiliary changes. We can see such change in this 
short dialogue:
A:
Has
she remarried? 

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Theoretical Course of English Grammar 
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