A Cognitive Metonymic Approach To Semantic Ellipsis

As a common linguistic phenomenon in language use, semantic ellipsis plays an important role in verbal communication. By means of semantic ellipsis, the form of language can be more concise and reach a better effect without affecting communication. It is one kind of meaning default, however the missing part will never result in misunderstanding and the added part can be inferred without changing the meaning of the sentence.The study of ellipsis has a long history, and many linguists both at home and abroad have studied this phenomenon. At home, the earliest study of ellipsis can be traced back to Han dynasty. As the development of traditional grammar, more and more scholars began to study ellipsis from the syntactic perspective. The appearance of Three-Dimension Theory brings a boom period of ellipsis study. Studies of ellipsis abroad can be mainly divided into transformational grammar perspective and functional grammar perspective. In early time, Chomsky considered ellipsis as a conversion. In government and binding theory, ellipsis belongs to empty category. The recent study about ellipsis from formal syntax is behind indirect licensing. The School of Functional Grammar viewed ellipsis as zero substitution from cohesive point. In the1980s, as cognitive linguistics came into being, a new perspective for analyzing ellipsis is afforded.This thesis aims to give a cognitive explanation for semantic ellipsis by employing some basic views of cognitive linguistics. The most important point of ellipsis study is correct comprehension, however the understanding of semantic ellipsis must be based on the background of human’s cognitive psychology. Taking metonymic mechanisms in cognitive linguistics as the theoretical framework, combined with reference-point, script, action scenario, metaphor and relevance view, this study intends to seek out the internal rules during the comprehension of semantic ellipsis in the medium-length novel. It is beneficial for people to master and understand elliptical utterances, then to accomplish the communication smoothly.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction of the thesis, mainly focusing on the research background, significance, ainand data resources as well. The second chapter chiefly reviews different studies of ellipsis based on different linguistic approaches abroad and at home. The third chapter is the theoretical part of this thesis, giving a detailed introduction to metonymy from cognitive, relevance-theoretic and metaphoric view, as well as three kinds of metonymic mechanisms. The forth chapter is the body part of this thesis, in which the application of metonymic mechanisms to semantic ellipsis is discussed in detail. The fifth chapter is the conclusion part. Applying the metonymic mechanisms to semantic ellipsis can not only offer a new way to study semantic ellipsis, but also offer a wider scope for the future studies of metonymy.