The Cognitive Construal Of Ellipsis In The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer

Ellipsis is a linguistic phenomenon existing universally in human language. People are in pursuit of concise and intelligible as they communicate with others or write. Under this circumstance, ellipsis absolutely fulfills the requirement and performs an important role in human communication.Grammarians paid much attention to ellipsis in human natural language a long time ago and scholars in and abroad made a rather complicated research on its structure and function from the perspective of pragmatics and semantics. But this thesis tries to explore the meaning of ellipsis from the point of view of cognitive construal classified by Langacker and the researcher has ventured to select the following three for examination: prominence; perspective; background assumptions and expectations. Understandably, these construal operations do not always operate singly in the investigation of ellipsis. Accordingly, tentative efforts are made to show how they operate together when we try to find the meaning of ellipsis selected from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.Firstly, based on the previous definition of ellipsis proposed by former grammarians, the writer of this thesis puts forward her own definition. On the basis of definition, the writer classifies ellipsis into two major types: overt ellipsis and covert ellipsis. Meanwhile, covert ellipsis is classified into weak covert ellipsis and strong covert ellipsis.Secondly, this thesis gives a full explanation to cognitive elaboration, and illustrates the feasibility of applying the theory to analyze the meaning of ellipsis. Thirdly, the personality of the major characters and the outstanding features of dialogue in the novel are discussed. In addition, through the analysis of the similar and different aspects of ellipsis in and out of the novel, this thesis describes the characteristic of ellipsis in dialogue. Then, a survey of characteristic on ellipsis in this novel and others is made for the purpose of telling of the similarity and difference.Finally, great importance is attached to the connotative meaning of the ellipses selected from the novel on the basis of cognitive construal in purpose of come to the conclusions:â…°. Ellipsis is a kind of psycho-process;â…±. There are diverse parameters in understanding the implied meaning of ellipsis.Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, this thesis attempts to probe ellipsis for the purpose of providing a broader perspective of elliptical research. More important, the study of meaning of ellipsis will not only illustrate the way people observe and acquire things in the world determines the form of language, but also enlighten the teaching practice.