The Conceptual Matching,Resolution And Shifting Mechanism Of Ellipsis In English

Ellipsis,as one of the most significant and pervasive phenomena in language,is frequently used in both written and oral languages.Such a universal phenomenon has never failed to attract countless scholars' attention.Cognitive approach is relatively new to ellipsis compared with other approaches.However,many studies have overlooked the dynamic nature of textual development and the conceptual change existing in textual development during the analysis of ellipsis.Therefore,this study aims at exploring ellipsis in English under the framework of the Three-stage Anaphora Approach and attempts to find out whether this framework of anaphora study practically lends itself to ellipsis studies and how it can be applied to promoting the dynamic understanding of ellipsis in textual development.Such a tentative dynamic study will be able to generate a better understanding of ellipsis in English,especially in textual development.By analyzing plenty of examples of different kinds of ellipsis with the Three-stage Anaphora Approach,the thesis has conducted a comprehensive study on the dynamic mechanism of ellipsis in English language.The major part of this thesis deals with the conceptual matching,ellipsis resolution and conceptual shifting mechanism of three main kinds of ellipsis,that is,nominal ellipsis,verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis(Halliday&Hasan 1976).Some other ellipses,such as verbal ellipsis in coordination,are taken into consideration in order to have a more well-rounded understanding.The major findings of the thesis are as follows:(a)The Three-stage Anaphora Approach can be well applied to analyzing ellipsis to reveal the dynamic features and conceptual change in ellipsis.(b)Although ellipsis usually means the loss of linguistic form,the matching of ellipsis can be set up according to the neighboring structure of elliptical expression,the conventional usage and semantic traits of the presupposing item.If there are several antecedent candidates,the real one can be ascertained under the effect of context and grammatical structure.At last,the new concept generated according to the concept contained in the presupposed item and the context will be shifted to the elliptical position.The recovered linguistic form of elliptical expression indicates the complete understanding of ellipsis.The text develops then.(c)There are three main differences among the cognitive mechanisms of the three types of ellipsis in English.Compared with verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis,nominal ellipsis requires more cognitive effort to actualize matching and resolution.Besides,the importance of conceptual shifting is particularly embodied in clausal ellipsis because the linguistic form of recovered elliptical item usually differs from the presupposed item.What is more,the conceptual shifting mechanisms of these three types of ellipsis are also different.The thesis adopts a Three-stage-based analysis of ellipsis in English to uncover the cognitive mechanisms underlying this pervasive language phenomenon.Such a study above all reveals the dynamic process of ellipsis in English and thus generates a better understanding of it.At the same time,in some sense it has paved the way for the study of the integration of cohesive devices,which would show better the explanatory power of the Three-stage Anaphora Approach.