A Study On Semantic Association Ellipsis

Ellipsis is a means which constructs sentences and texts, and it takes an important place in text study. Previous scholars mainly studied ellipsis from grammatical level and involved in the definition and classification of ellipsis. In the 1980s, Three-dimension theory was put forward and brought new views for ellipsis study, which succeeded in traditional grammatical ellipsis, besides, it studied ellipsis from semantic and pragmatic views. This thesis is a part of semantic ellipsis based on this theory and explores a cognitive approach for understanding ellipsis, and association is the basis of this approach. In addition, this thesis explores three rationales to explain why ellipsis exists in reality, and it is the essence behind phenomenon. Finally, the conversion of ellipsis between Chinese and English is another problem to study, here the author provides us with three strategies to translate ellipsis.According to Three-Dimension Theory, ellipsis is classified into three types: syntax ellipsis, semantic ellipsis and pragmatic ellipsis. Syntax ellipsis focuses on structural omission, semantic ellipsis focuses on ideal omission, pragmatic ellipsis focuses on contextual omission. Semantic association ellipsis belongs to a part of semantic ellipsis.Semantic association ellipsis is a kind of semantic vacancy, omitted contents can't be recovered through context, therefore, the understanding of ellipsis is a difficulty in the study on semantic association ellipsis. The emphasis of this thesis is put on the cognitive pattern of understanding ellipsis. This cognitive pattern is based on neural network of brain as its physiological foundation, on connectionism as its cognitive foundation, on lexical network of semantic field as its linguistic foundation, which forms a bidirectional circle cognitive pattern.Clockwise circle presents the practical operation process of cognitive understanding of semantic association ellipsis. First, as we know, semantic field itself is a lexical network which easily makes people produce association and provides an effective searching zone to fill up omitted words, and connectionism is a kind of cognitive thought of human beings which can analyze and judge possible associated words in the related semantic field and select the exact words to fill up omitted part and send the information to neural network, when input information accumulates to some extent, language associating function of neural network is also activated, finally, by oral or written means language information can be output, when output information is in agreement with context of semantic field, omitted contents can be understood and proved.Vise versa, anticlockwise circle reflects the theoretical foundation and real possibility of this cognitive pattern. We can start from the physiological feature of brain, there exist synapse and connection functions between cranial nerves of brain, a definite store of information input can activate language system functions in neural network, which provides physiological possibility for ellipsis cognitive association; Viewing from cognitive thought of human beings, the obvious difference between human beings'thinking and animals'and computers'thinking is that human beings own connectionism cognitive thought, which can help people to associate unknown knowledge (information) from known knowledge (information) and provide cognitive foundation for ellipsis cognitive association; Semantic association field itself is an interconnecting lexical network which provides real language foundation for ellipsis cognitive association, the key task to understand ellipsis exactly is to find out proper words to fill up the omitted contents from related semantic field and realize the understanding of ellipsis.Besides, this thesis explores the rationales of semantic association ellipsis. There exists essence behind the phenomenon of ellipsis, its existence is based on some objective reasons and basis. Language is a system of information, and the efficiency coding principle in information theory requires brief language and stands out new information in order to transmit information effectively. In sociology there is economy principle or principle of least effort which directs the behavior of mankind, which promotes people to gain the most benefit with the least effort in communication. In linguistics cooperative principle and relevance theory also require that people only express relevant new information and omit known old information. From the above aspects, we can find out the rationales of ellipsis existing in real world.When translating ellipsis, whether its omitted parts will be translated depends on specific situation, sometimes, literal translation method will be adopted in order to keep the original style; sometimes, adding translation method will be used to make sentences regular in grammar; sometimes, filling-up translation method will be applied to express meaning more clearly.