Mind The Gap

Ellipsis and Stylistic Variation in Spoken and Written English

Peter Wilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317879886
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

We rarely speak or even write in the complete sentences that are often held to be the ideal form of linguistic communication. Language is, in fact, full of gaps, because speakers and writers operate in contexts which allow bits of language to be understood rather than expressed. This book systematically analyses this inherent gappiness of language, known as ellipsis, and provides an account of the different contexts, both linguistic and situational, which affect its use. Peter Wilson draws on a wide variety of examples of spoken and written English, and both literary and non-literary to present a comprehensive classification of elliptical language that ranges from the conversational fragment and the advertisement to the dialogue of Shakespeare and imagist poetry. Mind the Gap shows how ellipsis is a feature of major structural and stylistic importance to our understanding of spoken and written language, and will be of interest to undergraduate students of linguistics, literature, communication and the interrelations between them..

PART ONE

THE FORMS OF ELLIPSIS

CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS ELLIPSIS?

Some gaps can be dangerous things, like those between platform and train. Public warnings tell us to mind them, that is, pay attention and avoid. Other gaps may be beneficial, like the one in the hedge that gives access to the footpath that leads to the park. We mind such gaps in a quite different way, by seeking them out and using them. Whether they are structurally necessary or part of some environmental plan, these gaps probably have one overriding thing in common: they are easily overlooked. Commuters need constantly reminding of the dangerous gap. Walkers can be guaranteed to stroll right past the gap they are looking for. The title of this book implies an analogy between these physical gaps and those that occur in language. When examined closely, language is very gappy. However, these linguistic gaps are also easily overlooked in the relatively unexamined routines of language in use and one of the main aims of this book is to identify the different types of gap and how they operate within the linguistic system as a whole.

Some preliminary considerations

The most widespread term for many of the gaps that occur in language is ‘ellipsis’. Although the term is defined and used in slightly different ways by different linguists, I am taking it as generic for the purposes of this book. The main aim just mentioned can accordingly be expressed as a simple question: what is ellipsis? As is often the case with apparently simple questions, the answer proves to be less than straightforward. On the basis that exemplification is a good starting point for explanation, here is a clear-cut example of ellipsis in everyday language, similar to one cited in the English National Curriculum document I referred to in the Introduction:

A:	What is the capital of England?
B:	London [ ].

In most conversational question-and-answer sequences, or contextual rejoinders as they are often referred to, we do not bother to encode information that can be understood from the linguistic context. This creates a gap, which I have indicated by an empty set of square brackets. In this case we know that B’s reply ‘means’ that ‘London [is the capital of England]’. The gap has been filled with material recoverable from the linguistic context, a process I most often refer to as expansion. Not all instances of ellipsis are as simple and easily expanded as this one, however, and part of the aim of this book is to explore the range and complexity of the various types of gap identified.

The status of ellipsis as a linguistic phenomenon, its scope and range as a generic term, continues to be a matter of some debate within various branches of linguistics. Accordingly, this first part of the book provides a broad outline of ellipsis according to various formal, contextual and situational criteria. The overall aim of this classification is descriptive adequacy, though relevant theoretical issues will be taken into account. The rationale for this study of ellipsis is not, however, purely taxonomic. Elliptical features contribute to stylistic variation across a wide range of spoken and written genres. Therefore, another major aim of this book is to investigate how ellipsis manifests itself as an exponent of various styles of speech and writing. Accordingly, Part Two looks at how different types of ellipsis interact within texts to produce different stylistic effects. The range here is broad. Verbal artistry is reflected in linguistic choice, and the incidence of ellipsis is one of the ways in which the styles of particular writers, groups of writers and types of text can vary. For example, what, if any, relationship is there between linguistically elliptical features and the stylistic characterization elliptical, in the sense of obliquely expressed or coyly compressed? But, besides such literary concerns, these chapters also explore the way speakers and writers employ ellipsis in other, non-literary, categories of language in use, such as sports commentary or advertisements.

It is appropriate to note here that most of the examples discussed in this book are derived from actual language events: for speech, transcriptions of spontaneous conversation and media broadcasts; for writing, anything from newspapers and magazines to poems, plays and novels. The selectivity of these examples reflects at least preference, if not contrivance, on my part. It follows that any insights of a more general nature carry an implicit proviso about their wider applicability and significance, though I would hope the range of examples is sufficiently wide to justify some generalization. Some examples, particularly in the earlier chapters, are not from actual language events. They may have been generated by other linguists for the purpose of testing a hypothesis or illustrating a marginal case. Occasionally, examples of this kind are of my own devising.

The linguistic and stylistic properties of ellipsis are worthy objects of study in their own right. Within a largely descriptive approach it is unrealistic to aim for a unified theory of ellipsis, though some analytical principles, working hypotheses and contributions to theory are concomitant with a study of this kind. However, resulting insights from such study can contribute to wider aspects of language awareness, attitudes to linguistic correctness, textual analysis and critical ‘readings’ of language events as well as pedagogy related to these aspects. Take, for example, those primary school exercises that require answers to be given in complete sentences. By this token, my earlier example ‘What is the capital of England?’ would need to be answered by ‘London is the capital of England’, belying the naturally communicative answer ‘London’, that takes contextual information as understood. The requirement for answers in complete sentences probably reflects an unexamined equation between completeness and correctness that takes no account of the syntactic and contextual factors which make elliptical answers both more economical and stylistically attractive. It is also the case, however, that many teachers are aware of the need for children to assimilate complete syntactic structures into their written repertoire and this too prompts the call for complete sentences. Trivial though this particular example is, it illustrates how an awareness of ellipsis can inform pedagogic debate. The National Literacy Strategy entry for ‘ellipsis’, which I quoted in my introduction, suggests that a shift in awareness is being recorded and promoted in this respect.

At the other end of the spectrum of application the concept of ellipsis can help us to explain the impact of a poetic line in terms of its formal properties. Take, for example, the opening lines of Basil Bunting’s Chomei at Toyama:

Swirl sleeping in the waterfall!

On motionless pools scum appearing

disappearing!

(Bunting 1978: 63)

These seemingly unfathomable lines challenge the reader to make sense of their bizarre exclamations. Is the first line an exhortation to swirl while asleep in the waterfall? In this unlikely case, how does such an imperative relate to the lines that follow? At this stage the reader might decide to accept the lines as vivid images with no precise meaning and that would be fair enough. An alternative approach is to reconstruct, however tentatively, a more fully realized text by expanding perceived gaps:

[A] Swirl [is] sleeping in the waterfall!

On motionless pools scum [is] appearing

[scum is] disappearing!

Here ‘Swirl’ is the subject noun phrase of the opening exclamatory statement, which may be taken to mean that a powerful eddy lurks beneath the surface of the water. If so, the next lines begin to make sense: the swirl is repeatedly releasing and swallowing the scum, accounting for its appearance and disappearance on an apparently calm surface. The key to this reconstruction is the restoration of the finite verbal elements which disambiguate the syntactic structures in which they occur. Bunting, of course, deliberately maintains this ambiguity and the non-finite quality of the participles by creating the gaps in structure that he does. My reconstruction at least makes possible an interpretation of these opening lines as a metaphor for the sinking and surfacing memories of the poem’s protagonist, who some lines later says: ‘I have been noting events forty years’.

Ellipsis could well be defined as language’s faculty for incompleteness. How we acquire and use that faculty, appreciate and interpret it as listeners and readers, manipulate it as speakers and writers, are interesting and important issues at whatever level we are operating, from beginning reader to literary critic. When we listen, read, speak or write, we are always minding the gaps, whether we are aware of it or not, and it is the overriding aim of what follows to make them a more explicit object of our linguistic and critical awareness. The rest of this chapter explores some further examples of ellipsis as a way of introducing structures and processes that need to be taken into account and raising some of the issues that will need to be resolved in the chapters that follow.

A sample of dialogue

We began with a single contextual rejoinder. This next example is a rather more sustained piece of dialogue:

CONSTABLE:	Millions of years ago, Martians landed on earth. And found apes. They doctored the apes, and made ’em think.
SLAUGHTER:	Why did they doctor the apes, and make ’em think?
CONSTABLE:	What did you say?
SLAUGHTER:	Why did they doctor the apes, and make ’em think?
CONSTABLE:	Well … they doctored the apes, and made ‘em think, as an experiment.
SLAUGHTER:	That was a pretty cruel experiment.
CONSTABLE:	Martians have got a higher sense of morality than us.
SLAUGHTER:	They must have got a higher sense of morality than us.
CONSTABLE:	They stuck bits of their own minds in the poor apes’ heads. And those apes, they’re us.

Much of this dialogue will strike you as absurdly repetitious. If you do not recognize its origins, you might wonder if it is a parody of an absurdist script. Like most dialogue it consists of contextually linked questions, answers, statements and comments. As I noted above, we tend not to encode those elements that can be understood from the linguistic context. We can do so for special emphasis, but to do so at every opportunity, which is what I have done here, creates dialogue that is absurd or probably just tedious. Playwrights and other writers who ‘have an ear for dialogue’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Author’s Acknowledgements
• Publisher’s Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART ONE: THE FORMS OF ELLIPSIS
• PART TWO: THE STYLISTIC EFFECTS OF ELLIPSIS
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index