A Study of the Ellipsis Both in English and Chinese from the Angle of Parataxis and Hypotaxis
LI Qi-jiu · 2002
Ellipsis is an important element in text cohesion. It includes nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis. In ellipsis, there exists similarity but also obvious difference between Chinese and English owing to the difference in structure. The author believes that parataxis in Chinese and hypotaxis in English lead to the difference in ellipsis. The criterion of parataxis lies in expressiveness. If the meaning can be conveyed, grammar and logic will not be taken into account in ellipsis. So there is more ellipsis in subject and conjunction but less in predicate, compared with English that overemphasizes hypotaxis and thus mainly depends on the cohesive devices in text cohesion and grammatical markers in ellipsis.