Elliptical sentences - what is this?

1861 year. The novel "Les Miserables" is written. Victor Hugo sends the manuscript of the novel to the publisher with the following cover letter: "?" The answer was immediately followed: "!" ... Of course, the elliptic (incomplete) sentences discussed in this article are not so brief, yet equally dynamic, vivid and emotionally Saturated. This again confirms the fact that brevity is the sister of talent. So, for today elliptical proposals are our "hero", our main character, who is confused with other, equally important characters - incomplete sentences. Elliptical sentences mistakenly consider them a variety, but in modern linguistics they are treated separately. They are really easy to confuse. What are their differences? Let's figure it out ....

Elliptical and incomplete sentences

Incomplete are called sentences, which have no main or secondary members. But they are easy to understand, to restore due to the speech situation. For example, in the sentence "This fertilizer needs raspberries, then - black currant, then - the apple tree" only in the first part is not broken grammatical basis. In the second and third parts, the main terms of the proposal - "fertilization is necessary" - are omitted, but they are clear from the context, so they can be safely called incomplete.

Most often, such sentences are used in colloquial speech, in dialogues and descriptions. Elliptical sentences are a special type of sentence, in the structure of which there is only a predicate expressed by the verb. To recreate an action or make an idea of the state, there is no need for a context: "The seller - after him, loudly: - Come again!"; "In the dark sky - billions of bright stars." In the examples above, the verbs "said" and "are" are omitted. They are easy to understand, but not from the situation, but thanks to the entire design as a whole. It follows that, in spite of the formal absence of the main members, they take an active part in the construction of the proposal, and this brings elliptical sentences closer together with incomplete ones. In other words, incomplete and elliptical sentences are similar only in one thing - in the structure of construction, the absence of one of the members of the proposal. However, the incompleteness of the first is random and depends on how the text is constructed, and the incompleteness of the second is its norm, its feature. The table below summarizes what has been said and helps not to confuse these concepts:

The use of elliptic sentences

In conclusion, I would like to say that expressive, effective, emotionally colored elliptic sentences are widely used both in colloquial speech and in art works - in description, in narrative, in dialogues. Cases of their use in oratorical speech are not uncommon . The most interesting cases are the use of ellipses in the headlines of newspapers and magazines. The maximally compressed form, on the one hand, helps to save "on ink", and on the other hand, attracts a record number of readers uncommonly and brilliantly: "Our children - into our families", "At will - with a clear conscience?", "Salvation - in Covenants "," Poetry - first of all "," And for crusts - in the transition. "