The Study Of Ellipsis In English

Almost every grammatical school deals more or less with this universal grammaticalphenomenon of ellipsis. Empty category in transformational grammar, cohesion andcohesiveness in functional grammar, and syntactic analysis in descriptive grammar are allrelated to the category of ellipsis. Among the three features of ellipsis, i.e. silence, meaningand identity, the most important one is identity. Based on the cognitive theory, this paper triesto analyze ellipsis from both psychological and semantic points of view, and reclassify ellipsiswith a dichotomy, attempting to draw the conclusion that identity is the most essentialsemantic feature, thus the "essence of ellipsis".This paper consists of six parts:Introduction part gives a brief account on the current situation of the studies on ellipsis bythree major schools of grammar, and clarifies the purpose of this paper and the theoreticalbasis.Chapter one presents fully and clearly the studies on ellipsis by three major schools ofgrammar, pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of these studies on ellipsis.Chapter two undertakes to define and classify ellipsis, grounded on the understanding onellipsis of different grammatical schools, from the cognitive point of view.Chapter three attempts to further clarify that identity is the essential feature to defineellipsis.Chapter four concentrates on the interpretation on identity of ellipsis and a substantialanalysis of English ellipsis to review the fact that identity is the essentialsemantic-grammatical feature of ellipsis.With these detailed analyses of ellipsis, this paper draws the conclusion on the basis ofcognitive theory that identity is the essence.