A glance at the true self of Shakespearean ellipsis.(William Shakespeare)

Publication: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies

Publication Date: 01-JAN-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Adam Mickiewicz University Press

ABSTRACT

Stated simply, ellipsis is here seen possessed of the seeds, very pressingly felt, of a medium through which anaphora works. The layers built into the article include the contextual dependence of ellipsis and its essentially backward reference. And finally, the sobering truth is that ellipsis does not so much anchor in anaphora as is tugged between anaphora (endophoric reference) and deixis (exophoric reference).

O. Introduction

There is a timeless and universal quality about ellipsis that cannot be approached outside of anaphoric or deictic reference. Since the reality of ellipsis tirelessly taps into nuances deeper-seated than the mere unspoken, then pursuant to this observation, the best means have to be established of stripping and laying these nuances bare. In short, ellipsis, in its cohesion-fueled power, is not far removed from reference or substitution; hence the call for an anaphoric/deictic frame.

1. The anaphoric side of ellipsis

1.1. Contextual dependence

Just when one concedes that about any notion of ellipsis can be felled with the stroke of a pen by a linguist, unless that stroke inserts some flawed methodology into the entire scheme, along comes an aspect of it that makes a little propitious bow into every approach, no matter how "dimmed" the lights whereby ellipsis is viewed. So firm are the ties binding elliptical structures to a base of surrounding discourse that scholars honor it as an inexhaustible mine of interpretational wealth by mutual agreement. Even with the definition of ellipsis thinned out to transformational reduction, the participation in the stream of context is made manifest. That stream of context, or discourse, manages the neat trick of perfectly shoring up appropriate leads for every elliptical unit arising at a variety of points along its banks. It is a continuum in which divisions into before and after announce their weighty primacy over all else. As ellipsis treads this path of directionality that dictates that those leads, more scientific phrasings are antecedents, be placed in the tight grip of...

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