[Grammar] Ellipsis query..

Greetings!! My first post on this wonderful forum.

Ellipsis in English have been causing me major grief. I have couple of questions:

1. Is there any place on the net that has a good collection of 'rules of ellipsis'?

2. Consider the following sentence:

The performance of this car is better than your car.

I would think that this is a perfect case of ellipsis and we can easily interpret the above sentence as:

The performance of this car is better than [the performance of] your car.

Please advice.

Thanks,
Bharosey.

If you google rules of ellipsis you'll find plenty of information.

rambharosey said:

Greetings!! My first post on this wonderful forum.

Ellipsis in English have been causing me major grief. I have couple of questions:

1. Is there any place on the net that has a good collection of 'rules of ellipsis'?

2. Consider the following sentence:

The performance of this car is better than your car.

I would think that this is a perfect case of ellipsis and we can easily interpret the above sentence as:

The performance of this car is better than [the performance of] your car.

Please advice.

Thanks,
Bharosey.

Click to expand...

********** NOT A TEACHER **********


Bharosey,


Ellipsis also causes me grief.

(1) I have read the excellent replies given you by language

experts at another helpline, checked my books, and communicated with

three grammar experts.

(2) As I understand it, you want an ellipsis of

No. 1. "The performance of this car is better than the performance

of your car."

You are right that no one would usually speak or write that

way because repeating the word "performance" two times does sound

"strange."

Therefore, you felt that you could delete some words (ellipsis) and

produce No. 2:

"The performance of this car is better than your car."

"Everyone" tells you that No. 2 is not acceptable by most native speakers.

("Everyone" 's reason: The sentence seems to compare "performance"

with "car.")

Therefore, the experts at that helpline and the grammar experts whom

I contacted agree: If you do not want to say sentence No.1, then you

have to say something like:

The performance of this car is better than that of your car. / The

performance of this car is better than your car's (performance).

Of course, those sentences are not an ellipsis of sentence No. 1.

*****

You want to know why sentence No. 2 is not grammatical.

I wish to share an idea with you. It is only my idea.

I think that maybe (repeat: maybe) your No. 2 sentence is not

an acceptable ellipsis because your No. 1 sentence is already (!!!)

an ellipsis. That is, I believe that some books feel that your No. 1

sentence is actually an ellipsis of:

No. 3. "The performance of this car is better than the performance of

your car (is) (good)." (That is: The performance of this car is good

(beyond the degree) (in which) the performance of your car is good.)


Possible conclusion: If a sentence (like No. 1) has already experienced

ellipsis, then it cannot experience ellipsis again (as in No. 2).


********** NOT A TEACHER **********

TheParser said:

then you

have to say something like:

The performance of this car is better than that of your car. / The

performance of this car is better than your car's (performance).

Of course, those sentences are not an ellipsis of sentence No. 1.

Click to expand...

Or:

The performance of this car is better than that of yours.

(Not an English teacher)

Thanks TheParser for your very elaborate reply. Truly appreciate.

rambharosey said:

Greetings!! My first post on this wonderful forum.

Ellipsis in English have been causing me major grief. I have couple of questions:

1. Is there any place on the net that has a good collection of 'rules of ellipsis'?

2. Consider the following sentence:

The performance of this car is better than your car.

I would think that this is a perfect case of ellipsis and we can easily interpret the above sentence as:

The performance of this car is better than [the performance of] your car.

Please advice.

Thanks,
Bharosey.

Click to expand...

Ellipsis is never practiced where it leads/risks leading to ambiguity, as would be the case here, where it would effectively create a nonsensical comparison between 'performance', on the one hand, and 'your car', on the other.