| Ellipsis is one of the popular topics in linguistic research,and it is also a common phenomenon in spoken discourses.Speakers omit part of the known information in order to highlight the new information and achieve the principle of cognitive economy as well as using the least effort in speech communication.Previous studies have focused on the production and understanding of ellipsis from the perspectives of formal linguistics,functional linguistics,pragmatics and cognitive linguistics.However,few studies are conducted around distributive features,the cognitive-functional motivation and factors contributing to ellipsis in language representation.Therefore,this study aims to explore ellipsis in spoken discourses of Chinese English majors from the perspective of combining the cognitive and functional theories,and to explore the distributive characteristics,cognitive-functional motivation and factors contributing to the elided parts from the perspective of speakers.The specific research questions of this study include:(1)What are the distributive characteristics of ellipsis in Chinese English majors' spoken discourses?(2)What are the cognitive-functional motivations that influence the production of ellipsis in Chinese English majors' spoken discourses?(3)Compared with the English native speakers,what are the factors that influence these distributive features of ellipsis in Chinese English majors' spoken discourses?This study holds that ellipsis production is based on the presupposition of the speaker on the comprehension of the hearer,and the integration of production and comprehension can be interpreted in light of the combination of cognitive and functional theories.Both cognitive and functional studies analyze language from the perspective of meaning,though cognitive linguistics mainly discusses “where the language comes from” and functional linguistics focuses on the socialization of language,that is,“what functions language realize”.The two theories embody thefeatures of integration and complementary in essence.Based on this,this study combines the two approaches together,and establishes a cognitive-functional integration model for the interpretation of ellipsis as the subject,trying to outline the producing process of ellipsis from a cognitive-functional perspective,which combines Interactionism,ICM and Context view,and puts the generation process of ellipsis in the three-stratification system of language.In addition,this study adopts quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the characteristics of ellipsis in Chinese English majors' spoken discourses,and takes the production of English native speakers as reference in this analysis.Three small corpora are built in this study: two of which are English Majors corpora,(one of which covers more than 30 universities in China,in order to meet the needs of the research scope of the subjects,and the other is built from students in a Chinese university.The purpose of building this corpus is to interview these students and try to explore the motivation and factors of ellipsis).The third one is the English native speaker corpus,which is taken as reference data.By combining corpora and interview,this study analyzes the distributed characteristics,cognitive-functional motivations and factors contributing to ellipsis produced by Chinese speakers of English as a foreign language through combining quantitative and qualitative methods.The specific findings of this study are as follows:(1)Compared with the English native speakers' production,there are similarities and differences in the production of elliptical parts between English majors and native speakers.In terms of the frequency of ellipsis production,the frequency of ellipsis in English majors' spoken discourses is far lower than that of native speakers.In the aspect of syntactic position of elliptical parts,both English majors and native speakers produce the highest frequency of paratactic phrase ellipsis in spoken discourses.The frequency of using clausal ellipsis is relatively low in English majors' spoken discourses and the misuse of subject ellipsis appears in spoken discourses.Both English majors and native speakers present a certain degree of antecedent repetition in oral English,but the proportion of antecedent repetition in English majors' spoken discourses is higher.In terms of the sources of antecedents in spoken discourses,most of the antecedents come from linguistic context.In the aspect of the position between antecedent and elliptical parts,antecedents always come earlier than the ellipsis in both spoken discourses.(2)The cognitive-functional motivations in the production of ellipsis are asfollows:The combination of cognition and function explains the integration of“production-comprehension” in spoken discourses.The production of ellipsis is based on the comprehension of the addressee.This study finds that ellipsis production is driven by cognition.Experience view,prominence view and attention view are the cognitive factors that affect the production of ellipsis in oral communication.Firstly,experience view is the core factor that driving the production of ellipsis.The production of language is based on the interaction between human and the world.Human as cognitive subjects experience the world around them.The speaker does not produce all concepts related to the topic.According to the past experience,speakers omit some information that has been mentioned or do not need to repeat it to achieve the maximum of cognitive effect and the minimum of cognitive effort.Secondly,attention view also explains one of the reasons for speakers to omit some parts of the content.Speakers pay attention to the salient information in spoken discourses,but not to the elliptical parts.Lastly,prominence view plays an important role in the process.The prominence view means that the speaker highlights the new information by omitting old information that has been mentioned or shared by both parties.One of the functions of ellipsis is to highlight the new content and enable the addressee to grasp the important information in conversations.Ellipsis embodies experiential,interpersonal and textual functions in spoken discourses.Without linguistic forms in the text,the meaning of elliptical parts relates the antecedent.Thus the experiential function of ellipsis is equivalent to the antecedent.The interpersonal function of ellipsis depends on the social distance and cultural background.If their social distance and cultural background are relatively close,ellipsis avails consultation and communication between the two parties,and can be good for shortening the communication time to highlight the new information.If their social distance is relatively far and cultural background is different,some information will reoccur to ensure the communication successfully.Ellipsis in spoken discourse also embodies textual function.Ellipsis can make the information produced in an orderly way,which is beneficial to the coherence of the text.It also helps the addressee to activate and establish a new framework according to the information flow produced by the speaker.(3)There are four factors that influence the production of ellipsis for Chinese learners of English: lack of resources in the second language,negative transfer of the native language,the speaker's intention and factors contributing to context.The production of ellipsis is restricted by lack of resources in second language.When restricted by resources of second language and the automation of language production,the output of ellipsis will be influenced.While the students are not sure whether language expressions can be omitted,or when they have problems in vocabulary,grammatical knowledge that can influence the production,they will avoid using elliptical expressions and try to seek the safer side by trying to produce the utterance in a fullway.Speaker's intention is another reason that affects the production of ellipsis.On the basis of comprehension by the addressee,ellipsis can save the speaker's effort to achieve the effect of economy in oral English.When speakers aim to achieve pragmatic intention,they will reproduce the antecedent in spoken texts.Moreover,subject ellipsis is a common phenomenon in Mandarin Chinese.As the subjects are influenced by the interference of L1 online thinking when producing oral English,they will misuse the subject ellipsis in spoken English discourses,which is influenced by negative transfer of mother tongue.In addition,context is also one of the factors that affect the production of ellipsis in spoken discourses.When the antecedent appears in the linguistic context,the students tend to omit the language units that would appear again,so as to use the least effort to achieve the economic effect of the discourse.When the antecedent appears in the physical context,ellipsis tends to be produced,as the two parties can know whether the addressee comprehends it,e.g.with the help of an expression,gesture or non-verbal cues.However,when the antecedent appears in the encyclopedia context,the frequency of ellipsis is far lower than that in the two previous situations.If the antecedent does not come from the encyclopedia knowledge shared by both parties,it may lead to ambiguity for the addressee.This study explores the ellipsis in English majors' spoken discourses in light of the theories of cognitive-functional linguistics.By combining corpus analysis and interview research,it deeply explores the characteristics of the production of ellipsis by Chinese learners of English,the cognitive-functional motivation and factors contributing to its productionin spoken discourses by combining quantitative and qualitative methods.Based on this,this study puts forward suggestions about spoken English for future research,aiming for providing reference for oral English teaching and Chinese learners in the future. |
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