At 9:24 am -0400 24/4/00, Vasiliy Chernov wrote:
[....]
>
>I suspect that enabling ellipsis is not so mandatory.
>
>For example, in English, you can't say simply 'Reads' in reply to a
>question like 'What does he do?'
Oh, but you can!
>(Or at least I was taught you can't; L1 speakers may correct me).
You're welcome :)
>You must say 'He reads' - a very strange
>thing for the speakers of more synthetic langs.
A pedantic 'rule' - haven't observed it for many years. Don't recall ever
being misunderstood.
>In many cases you can't omit the object. This may be partly conditioned
>by the common transitive/intransitive homonymy ('Burn!' wouldn't mean
>the same as 'Burn it!'), but there must be other factors involved (can
>you ever say in English simply 'Give!' or 'Take!', I wonder? And why,
>if not?).
Can, if the context is clear. And whenever I bought a coffee on my last
trip to the US, I was always given the command 'Enjoy!' as it was handed to
me. This custom is now spreading this side of the pond also.
>Similarly, I think SOV (OSV, VSO, VOS) languages may prohibit certain
>types of elliptic structures (e. g. requiring a pronominal filler in
>some cases).
>
>I see a lot of possibilities here (which mostly seem incompatible
>within one lang): 'Don't omit the subject', 'Don't drop the object',
I think this sort of ellipsis occurs more readily in SVO languages where
the positioning of the verb makes it clearer whether the subject or the
object is "understood".
Ray.
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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
[J.G. Hamann 1760]
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