Concepts of an actor-oriented approach

Ellipsis refers to ‘’omission of an item.’’ That is already understood from the antecedent context (Supong: 2010). An elliptical item ‘’leaves specific structural slots to be filled from elsewhere’’. In the linguistic view substitution requires an explicit linguistic form such as do and one to refer to presupposed item, where as in ellipsis, no linguistic item is used to refer to the proposed item. The idea of omitting part of the sentences on the assumption that an earlier sentence will make meaning clear is known as ellipsis. Ellipsis plays important part in sentence connection, if we come across a structure that seems to be an elliptical construction; we are usually forced to look back to what was previously said in order to interpret the sentences. The sentence will be interpreted by reference to what has been ellipted and we can only know what has been ellipted on the basis of what is present in the preceding context.

In an attempt to encourage an elliptical or substitute clause, the reader or listener needs to supply the missing words, which provides a cohesive relationship with what has been stated before. Quirk, R. Greenbaum, S. Leach, G. & Syartric,J. (1985:707) state that ellipsis is an

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abbreviating device for redundancy and therefore its major use is to avoid repetition in a text.

Also it is always possible to reconstitute the elliptical item so that it becomes fully explicit.

Like substitution, ellipsis is classified in to three, thus, nominal, verbal and clausal, e.g. a.

Ibrahim bought some oranges and Musa some guavas (verbal ellipsis)

b. Three members of staff went there and yet another three (nominal ellipsis).

c. I left my meal in the kitchen and someone came in and ate it up without saying a word to me. I wish I could find out who (clausal ellipsis).

In sentence ‘a’ above, the verb ‘bought’ has been elided, in ‘b’ the noun ‘members’ has been elided while in ‘c’, ‘’who’’ replaces ‘someone’, and the clause ‘’came in’’ has been elided.

In addition, Halliday (as cited in Ballard, 2007) illustrates with the following lines ‘Time flies’

‘You can’t they fly so quickly’

The above lines from Halliday shows that ‘’cohesion’’ is expressed no less than three times.

The elliptical form ‘you can’t’

The reference item ‘they’

The lexical item ‘flies’

These cohesive elements combine together to give the two sentences the quality of being a complete text analysis.

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Akindele 2011) classify substitution and ellipsis as two different types of cohesive devices although in later work by Halliday (1994) the two cohesive deceives are combined in a single category, as in:

‘’there are only a few vehicles on the road, more are expected to travel along the road after the New Year holiday’’.

(The word vehicle is omitted in the second part of the sentence).

Ellipsis is a term used in grammatical analysis to refer to sentence where, for reasons of economy, emphasis or style, a part of the structure has been omitted, which is recoverable from a security of the context. Traditional grammars talk here of an element being ‘’understood’’, but linguistic analysis tend to constrain the notion more emphasizing the need for the elided (or ellipted) parts of the sentence to be ambiguously specifiable. For example, in the sequence:

A: where are you going?

B.: to town.

The full form of B’s sentence is predictable from A’ sentence (‘I am going to town’). But in such sentences as thanks, yes, etc. it is generally unclear the full form of such sentences might be (thanks are due to you? I give you thanks), and in such circumstances the term ‘ellipsis’ would probably not be used. Elliptical constructions are essential features of everyday conversation, but the rules governing their occurrences have received relatively little study. They are also sometimes referred to as reduced, contracted, deleted or abbreviated constructions. (Crystal, 2011:166).

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In addition, Matthews (2007:119) believed that an ellipsis is the omission of one or more elements from a construction, especially when they are supplied by the context. If A asks: have sin my glasses? B. Might answer elliptically ‘’I am afraid I haven’t, with the reminder of the construction (seen your glasses) to be understood from the question. Hence, ‘to ellipt’: thus seen your glasses would be ‘ellipted’ in B’s answer.

The scope of ellipsis depends in part on how the elements of the sentences are described.

Thus In ‘John did’ one might again say that a part of the construction is missing.cf John did see them. But where the stress is on John, one might be tempered to argue that there is no ellipsis:

John did, but not with a similar expression, John did see them. Instead ‘did’ might be described as perform which itself forms the entire predicate.

Ellipsis is essentially the omission for a clause or sentence of an element which can nevertheless be inferred, usually because it is recovered from elsewhere. Examples:

1a. Terry cut the grasses and Terry weeded the flower beds.

2a. Terry painted the ceiling and Julia painted the walls.

In example 1a, the subject Terry occurs in both clauses while in example 2a, the verb painted occurs in both clauses. Sometimes we reiterate information or the purpose of emphasis, but often there is no need to repeat an item just given. Therefore, we simply omit which would have been repeated because it will still be understood by our audience. This omission of retrieval information is known as ellipsis. It can be indicated by using the symbol o. the above examples can be reformulated using ellipsis.

1b. Terry cut grasses and o weeded the cut flower.

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2b.Terry painted the ceiling and Julia o the walls.

Ellipsis is a feature very commonly found in compound sentences and is another example of the economy that is being practiced in language. Similar omission, however, is not possible when one clause is subordinate to another:

1c. Since Terry cut the grasses, he also weeded the flower beds.

1d. Since Terry cut the grass, 0 also weeded the flower beds.

2c. Terry painted the ceiling while Julia painted the walls.

2d. Terry painted the ceiling while Julia the walls.

This is significant constraint on ellipsis and indicates one of the important differences between clauses join through coordination and those joined in an equal relationship through subordination. (Ballard, 2007: 167).

From the above examples, we are able to identify that something is understood, because we are away of a syntactic gap in the structure. In the first examples, we are aware that the subject of the second clause ‘weeded the flower’ is missing and we are able to find this missing information by inferring to the subject of the first clause, namely, ‘Terry’. In the second example, it is the verb element ‘painted’ which is missing and we can again refer to the proceeding clause to find the missing element.

Using language in an efficient and economic way is the reason why ellipsis occurs in syntactic structure of a language and it does not favour repetition unless it is for emphasis or for classification. Some repetition can be avoided by using anaphors: ellipsis is basically another method of avoiding repetition. (Light,2011 ,Bamberge, 1984)

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Apart from compound sentences, ellipsis can also occur across sentence boundaries and speech turns. It is therefore another important cohesive device in discourse, especially spoken discourse. Consider this conversational extract where Francine is talking about a local nightclub:

Francine: I went to The Works on Friday James: did you (.) who with

Francine: Jo and some friends.

From the above conversation, Francine’s first turn is grammatically complete, as is appropriate for the introduction of new topic.

S V A A

I went to The Works on Friday

However, Jame’s reply, if considered in isolation is clearly grammatically incomplete.

Wh-word operator S V A A Who did you θ θ θ θ θ θ θ θ with

Despite the incompleteness, the meaning is perfectly clear because it can be retrieved from Francine’s turn:

Did you go to The Works?

Who did you go to The Works With?

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In the first part of his reply(did you), James ellipted the verb and adverbial elements from Francine’s preceding clause as there is no need to repeat any element a second time. In the next part of his reply (who with), he also ellipted the operator and the subject element he had supplied previously. In his reply to James’s question Francine also uses ellipsis:

S V A A

θ θ θ θ with Jo and some friends

Here, Francine ellipts all the clause elements for her original statement and simply adds the traditional information James required. There is no likelihood; however, that James Francine would misunderstand each other despite the extensive use of ellipsis in their responses. (Ballard, 2007: 199-200). In a normal sense, ellipsis is Endophoric in nature but can also be exophoric.

For example, a sign by an escalator saying ‘keep to the right of the escalator. ‘While someone buying a ticket at a cinema box-office might simply say to the cashier ‘three adults please meaning I’d like tickets for three adults please.