A Study Of Ellipsis In Poetry From The Perspective Of Prominence Theory

Ellipsis as a common phenomenon in the language especially is the key feature of poetic language. Since ancient times, scholars from home and abroad do a great deal of research on ellipsis from different perspectives, besides, most researches are done from syntax and rhetoric point of view,seldom study on ellipsis in poetry. With the development of cognitive linguistics, cognitive linguists come up with a variety of cognitive theories to interpret language, especially along with the emergence and development of cognitive poetics which provides new theoretical support to study literary texts such as poetry. Cognitive Poetics as a new cross-discipline which is based on cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, cognitive psychology and other related disciplines tries to apply these theoretical models to study literary texts, such as poetry, which can be analyzed with relevant theory of cognitive linguistics.This thesis is based on the principles of prominence with its main parameter--perspective, using"Figure--Ground"which is the main operational mechanism of prominence to analyze ellipsis in poetry from cognitive angle.This thesis points out that ellipsis is considered as background which is complementary with prominence. It seems that ellipsis and prominence are a pair of contradiction, in fact they complement each other. Neither of these two can be dispensed, object can not be profiled without ellipsis; in contrast, ellipsis can not exist without prominence. When people observe the same object, they will select different part as profiled subject in cognitive domain due to various perspective or attention, which will lead to different cognitive processes and results. As a result,different aspects of the same object will be profile. Prominence and ellipsis seem as a pair of contradiction, but this paper believed that they are complementary. One aspect of the object is profiled because of fixed perspective, the other aspects are hidden. The hidden part is background, and profiled part is figure which is the poetic language the reader appreciates.This thesis believes that ellipsis not only gives poets more freedom to write and evokes reader's imagination, but also leaves more spaciousness to let reader fine good flavor. The poetic language is simple and concise, the reader only with the help of plentiful imagination, mobilizing more cognitive operation to activate the appropriate cognitive knowledge of the world, fill the default information and understand the imagery of poetry. The reader interprets the same poem from different perspective, which will result in different cognitive effect, therefore, different aspects are profiled, so we can interpret poetry from various aspect. This thesis focuses on prominence theory of cognitive linguistics, exploring the function of ellipsis in the formation of imagery of poetry, trying to provide a new perspective for the study and appreciation of poetry. In addition, prominence theory provides a new way for the poetry translation by analyzing the profiled degree of the images in poetry to determine the relationship between figure and background,which can help the translators get a better understanding of the original text, so as to instruct the translators to produce a translation equivalent to the original text both in meaning and in form.