On The Essence Of The English Ellipsis

Ellipsis is an important structural device in English grammar. My present thesis is an attempt to study elliptical phenomena from the ontological perspective. Its main purposes are to draw the essence of the English ellipsis and reclassify ellipsis on the base of its essence. It argues that identity is the essence of ellipsis and we can reclassify ellipsis by the relationship between the elliptical element and its respective module-if the identical relationship exists syntactically, we call it overt ellipsis; if it exists psychologically, we call it covert ellipsis. To prove the correctness of my hypothesis, I adopt the cognitive viewpoints as my theoretical basis and my personal experiment of teaching my daughter English as an example. From this example of my daughter's acquisition of English, I draw a conclusion that ellipsis as a kind of structural device is developed simultaneously with the development of language. Then a dichotomy of ellipsis is made and some design features are suggested.At the same time, we discuss some constraint conditions that may make the elliptical sentences ungrammatical. Four constraint conditions are proposed.Finally we draw a conclusion that identity is the essence of the ellipsis not only in English but also in all the languages in the world. Different language has different constraint conditions that I call parameters. When the two (essence and parameters) combined together, it can be used to explain all the elliptical phenomena in all the languages in the world.