Textual ellipsis
Textual ellipsis occurs when two consecutive clauses have elements in common. The two clauses may form part of the same utterance by one speaker 1, or they may be distributed between two speakers, as in 2. The words in common are omitted in the second clause. In English the remaining part often ends with an auxiliary or a pronoun. (In the examples, ellipted material is recovered in italics.)
1 I’m sure he would help you, if he could (help you).
2 Shall we go for a walk? – Yes, let’s (go for a walk?).
3 Why can’t he just send a message? And for that matter, why can’t YOU? (just send a message)
Catenative verbs which take to-infinitive clauses such as want, mean (= intend), used to and like obligatorily retain the to, with the rest of the clause ellipted, as in 4. Wh- complement clauses and questions can be ellipted, leaving the wh-element as in 5:
4 A fine mess you’ve made of things. – I didn’t mean to (make a fine mess of things).
5 Why can’t he find you a comfortable job? – He will (find me a comfortable job), but I don’t know when (he’ll find me a comfortable job.)
These examples illustrate final ellipsis. Medial ellipsis is featured in 6 and 7, while 8 illustrates initial ellipsis, where ellipsis of the pronoun is an alternative analysis to zero anaphora.
6 What time does this party of Robin’s start? He said [it starts at] six-to-eight.
7 Shirley wore jeans and Tina (wore) a miniskirt.
8 They got on the bus and (they) sat down in the front seat behind the driver.
