Ellipsis and Economy
Weiying Chen · Journal of Zhejiang University(Humanities and Social Sciences) · 2005
Ellipsis is a complex and complicated phenomenon in language.It has a huge number of forms of manifestations and a large variety of circumstances associated with them.It not only involves every aspect of grammar,but also has close links with rhetoric,psychology,sociology and so on.The research on ellipsis has a long tradition both in China and abroad.But previous studies on ellipsis have largely been restricted to syntactic,semantic or textual analysis and have had a static nature.Actually,the understanding of elliptical structures depends on the cognitive and mental mechanisms which form the linguistic consciousness.This article first introduces a systematic and diachronic research about ellipsis,then analyses it from the dynamic,cognitive and pragmatic perspectives,with the view to exploring the psychological motive and value orientation in the construction of ellipsis,thereby demonstrating the dialectic relationship between ellipsis and economy.Ellipsis,a dynamic pragmatic element,exists widely in daily conversations and various registers and discursive genres.It is context-dependent,recoverable and flexible.It can serve the purposes of cohesion,coherence and conciseness.The principle of economy or the principle of the least effort is the fundamental principle to guide the human behavior.In the case of human communication and social interaction,it is also essential to understand the deep cause of elliptical occurrences.Based on a profound review of the psychological motives behind ellipsis,conclusion has been drawn that the generative mechanism of widespread ellipsis is the tendency of the least effort in the human mentality.Verbal communication follows the principle of economy.Given and old information is more likely to be omitted whereas the new one is highlighted and emphasized in explicit expressions.Therefore,the expression and reception of the communicative intention have more efficiency.Encoding and decoding of language symbols are neither time-consuming nor laborious.Generally speaking,the omitted information will be recovered within the cognitive context.If a dynamic viewpoint is adopted in the interpretation of the elliptical phenomenon,the elliptical components are represented as ellipsis to the speakers.The listeners are not obstacles to a complete and correct comprehension.Because of the listeners' adequate knowledge in the brains to recognize and cognize ellipsis,they can understand the omitted messages perfectly.This process is in fact the retracing and refilling of all the elliptical components.In other words,economy is the deep motive for ellipsis while the latter is the surface reflection of the former.On the other hand,the principle of economy should not be exaggerated to the extreme.It doesn't mean that there is no more redundancy in language use.What it really implies is that relatively economical and simpler expressions are preferred to achieve more and optimal communicative effects.The present study takes a broader historical and psychological approach in trying to sketch out a more detailed and sophisticated analysis,which may have implications for a broader understanding of huamn social actions.