Re: Ellipsis (was: Re: Italian Particles)

At 3:29 pm -0400 24/4/00, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond Brown scripsit:
>
>> A pedantic 'rule' - haven't observed it for many years.  Don't recall ever
>> being misunderstood.
>
>Are quite intelligible, yes, but then is intelligible to say "Me see she",
>(means same as "I see her", not "she sees me", BTW), too.
"Me see she" is not immediately intelligible and, indeed, is potentially
ambiguous, since the cases of the pronouns are working in a sort of
contrapuntal way to the word order.  The example IMHO is silly and proves
nothing one way or the other about ellipsis - it is irrelevant.

>Nevertheless [ellipsis of subject] ungrammatical,
Yes, according to _prescriptive_ grammarians.  But surely we are a little
more enlightened on this list?  A _descriptive_ grammarian would not ignore
this phenomenon of late (British) English.

>and no native speaker likely to produce in ordinary speech.
On the contrary, such ellipsis is *not uncommon* this side of the pond.
And most of us on this quaint island of ours are native speakers - indeed,
those of us who were born & brought up in that part known as England have,
methinks, a claim to be the most native of all users of _English_.

I do omit the subject both in speaking and writing in certain contexts.
Never struck me as funny - and certainly I've heard it in Brit English, and
never realized it sounded funny to my American cousins.

>Imperatives a different question
>altogether, as far as subjects concerned, naturally.
>
>Basically Ray talking funny.
No, I was actually being serious.  I was pointing out a feature of actual,
living English.

The ellipsis of subject pronouns is not at all uncommon IME. The 1st person
is quite often omitted:

"Sorry - must dash now!   Got to pick the kids up from school."
"Can't tell you, I'm afraid.  Promised the wife to keep it secret". [Not
all subjects are dropped   :)   ]

With some verbs, e.g. "hope" - this is practically the norm in some
people's speech, e.g.
"Will you be seeing him this evening?"  "Hope so!"

"Hope you're not going to tell him now!"

The 2nd person may be omitted in questions, e.g.
"Want to hear the latest?"

"Going to visit your aunt again this weekend?"

Omission of 3rd person occurs, e.g.
"What did you say your husband does?" "Teaches in local college."

"Good holiday?"  "Nah - complete washout! Rained every day."

etc.

Ok - such sentences may sound funny in north America - I'm not in a
position to know.  But they don't sound funny here.  Such things are said
by L1 speakers of English.

IMHO if it had not been for the influence of prescriptive grammarians (who
still try to stop us splitting infinitives!), modern English would possibly
(probably, I think) be little different from modern Mandarin regarding
so-called ellipsis of the subject.

>> 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.
>
>IMHO borrowing from Yiddish.
Possibly - but now establish.  Omitting the object seems less common to me
than omitting the subject, but it is done in certain contexts.


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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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