What is Ellipse?
What Does Ellipse Mean
The Greek word elleipsis came to Latin as ellipsis , which in our language derived in ellipsis . It is a concept used in grammar, literary theory, and rhetoric.
Ellipsis is called the elimination of a discursive element whose content can be reconstructed thanks to the information of the context. This means that the receiver is able to infer the deleted segment .
For example: “The dogs barked incessantly. They were nervous about something . " As you can see, there is an ellipsis in the second sentence, since it is not mentioned who was nervous (the subject is eliminated ). Said mention is unnecessary because, from the preceding sentence, it is clear that the mention refers to dogs.
The ellipsis can also consist of the deletion of the verb : "Laura played in the bedroom and Pedro, in the dining room . " In this case, the ellipsis supposes the elimination of the verb to play, without affecting the meaning of the expression (it is evident that both people were playing).
In this case it is important to refer to another fundamental theme of our language, from a grammatical point of view: the use of the comma . In the first place, this punctuation mark helps us divide the speech into portions that are easier to intonize, that allow us to breathe between them and give the interlocutor more time to understand its meaning. However, with the ellipsis of verbs, the comma becomes necessary to replace them.
Returning to the previous example of the two people who were playing in different parts of the house, if we omit the comma we would obtain an apparently incomplete sentence: if the last part were "and Peter in the dining room" , it would give the feeling that the verb is missing , which should be located after the word "dining room", so it would not be easy to understand. It is enough to place a comma after "Pedro" to indicate that this subject is performing the same action as the previous one.
And this leads us to reflect on the risks that the increasingly rudimentary use of language entails, a phenomenon that is difficult to face in our society. The educational system does not encourage children to worry about grammar, spelling and semantics, but continues to impose this knowledge as it has always done: by force and on the basis of memorization. With programs now writing for us, we no longer need to put into practice what we learned in school, and this is made worse by the conventions of instant messaging.
Ellipsis is the conscious omission of an element of discourse, the absence of which does not affect understanding precisely because it is compensated by the use of other resources that make up the context. If we ignore this theory and use ellipsis, intentionally or accidentally, the meaning of our message is affected. It is important to remember that technology is not the "culprit" of this decline, but we must learn to use it properly; in fact, it offers us invaluable correction tools.
As a figure of speech, ellipsis is an omission that is applied to generate a certain effect . Ellipsis is often used to avoid repetitions that, if present, would cause the text to lose fluidity and rhythm.
In the world of cinema , time ellipsis are common to shorten the length of a film, eliminating fragments that would be irrelevant in the story. They also serve to make the narration possible when it is intended to tell events that are distant from each other. Sometimes the ellipsis is made explicit through a notice (of the type “Four years later” or “Two months later” ).