Ellipsis in Mosuli Arabic Discourse: A Functional Pragmatically-based Study

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to study ellipsis and the elliptical strategies used in Mosuli Arabic discourse from a functional pragmatically based perspective. It aims at investigating the types and functions of ellipsis, alongside the elliptical strategies employed by Mosuli Arabic speakers in the everyday discourse. In order to achieve this aim, it is hypothesized that: (1) Ellipsis and elliptical strategies are frequently used in Mosuli Arabic daily situational discourse with specific functions, (2) Ellipsis is pragmatically oriented, hence contextually interpreted (3) Ellipsis, as communicative strategy in Mosuli Arabic interactions, falls into several types and functions. A descriptive qualitative method is used in this study. Three episodes of a sitcom are chosen as a data reflection to Mosuli every-day discourse. The data utterances, after their collection, transcription, and identification, are analyzed on the basis of a functional pragmatically based model, which is built on certain theorizations taken from two well-known models; namely, the textual model of Halliday and Hasan (1976), and the pragmatic model of Grice (1989). The study has found, due to the results obtained by data analysis, that Mosuli Arabic interlocutors, when engaged in a conversational discourse, use, by violating, flouting, clashing, or opting out CP maxims, certain elliptical strategies with specific intended communicative functions. In this regard, it has been found that such breaking procedure is recovered and interpreted contextually within the relevant conversational implicature, underlying the elliptical utterances, which is activated by the pragmatic dichotomy; 'presupposition' and 'inference'. As a striking conclusion, ellipsis, along its strategies, types and functions realized in the contextual situations considered here, is daily used in the Mosuli Arabic discourse, where it is proved to be pragmatically and linguistically determined by the cultural ideology of Mosuli Arabic speech-community.