ellipsis
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omission from a clause of one or more words that are nevertheless understood in the context of the remaining elements
~14 min read
Encyclopedic overview
In linguistics, ellipsis (Ancient Greek: ἔλλειψις, romanized: élleipsis, lit. 'omission'), or elliptical construction, is the omission from a clause of one or more words that are nevertheless understood in the context of the remaining elements. There are numerous distinct types of ellipsis acknowledged in theoretical syntax. Theoretical accounts of ellipsis seek to explain its syntactic and semantic factors, the means by which the elided elements are recovered, and the status of the elided elements.
Background
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “ellipsis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.