Another look at ellipsis Non-native recoverability of ellipsis and its implications for linguistic competence

Abstract

Abstract In syntactically defined ellipsis words are ellipted if they are uniquely recoverable, i.e. if the words to be supplied are uniquely determined, and the antecedents of the ellipted words are usually found in the preceding linguistic context. This study examines samples of ellipsis which non-native speakers of English find difficult to process, and uncovers a different kind of ellipsis that has rarely been noted in traditional grammars. In this type of ellipsis, the antecedent of what is ellipted is not in the neighboring linguistic environment, and yet can easily be recovered by native speakers. The ellipted elements are often part of the constituents of so-called `collocations', and encyclopedic common-sense knowledge sometimes plays a crucial role to help retrieve what is ellipted. After the examination of various examples of this type of ellipsis it is concluded that native speaker/hearers' recoverability of ellipsis refers to the sum total of the knowledge that they have internalized, both linguistic and extra-linguistic, inextricably bound together.