There is a name in linguistics for the kind of incompleteness being talked
about here: ellipsis. We are allowed to leave out phrases that would be
repetitious, as long as they can be recovered or 'understood' from the
context. Tolerance of ellipsis increases with the informality of the
situation and with the degree of acquaintance of the people interacting
(the better people know each other, the more background knowledge they
share; therefore, the more they can safely leave out).

Do we need to teach about it? I think a brief explanation like the one I
just gave will serve in certain situations: when students raise questions
about sentences that look 'incomplete' to them, for instance. Maybe we
don't need to bring it up unless students notice it and want information
about it.

It is, however, an interesting aspect of sentence grammar interacting with
'text grammar': it is the recoverability of the missing information from
the surrounding (usually preceding) text that permits ellipsis. I don't
know if students sometimes err when they write by leaving out more than
the reader can recover; but if they do, then some teaching of ellipsis
might be in order for such students. Composition teachers: Does this
happen?

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Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184     Fax: (805)-756-6374                   ~
E-mail: [log in to unmask]                           ~
Office hours Winter 1999: Mon/Wed 10:10-11am Thurs 2:10-3pm   ~
Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba                     ~
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