(Non-)Ellipses in Dutch, English, and German

Abstract

In this article we analyse the because X constructions in Dutch, English, and German in light of their assumed elliptic character. We show that the construction in all three languages started out as textual ellipses and later on developed into situational ellipses. Recently, as we show using data from Twitter, non-elliptical instances can be found as well. On the one hand, we focus on the underexplored aspect of the ellipticity of these constructions. On the other hand, we address the more general question of where and how to draw the line between elliptical and non-elliptical structures.