Clausal ellipsis in English and Arabic : a contrastive study

Abstract EN

This paper aims to investigate the extent and ways in which English and Arabic are similar and different in their presentation of clausal ellipsis.

The English and Arabic data are analyzed on the basis of Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Abbas (2005) respectively.

The two languages are then compared and contrasted, among other things, in terms of principle of ellipsis, purposes of ellipsis, extent of clausal ellipsis, and types of elliptical clauses.

The analysis shows that both English and Arabic apply the same principle for ellipsis: nothing can be omitted unless it is recoverable from the context.

However, it is not necessary that meaning should be recovered through the same expression in both languages.

It is also attested that ellipsis is used for brevity, rhetorical, and cohesion purposes in both languages.

Ellipsis in Arabic, however, is very common; it is the nature of Arabic.

Ellipsis is also frequently used to achieve eloquence in Arabic.

As far as clausal ellipsis is concerned, the analysis shows that one element or a whole clause can be omitted in both English and Arabic.

English and Arabic have constructions where there is no missing information, yet they are considered elliptical constructions.

Such constructions are not signaled by syntactic ellipsis, but rather by semantic ellipsis.

Both English and Arabic display verbal identification of elided items in speech.

Another major finding is that when two or more English paratactic clauses have different subjects, only the first paratactic clause constitutes the domain of the presupposition.

In some reported speech sequences, instances of ambiguity are attested in English.

Despite these similarities, the analysis reveals some differences between English and Arabic.

Unlike Arabic, ellipsis is not satisfactorily defined in English because it involves phenomena such as syntax, lexical semantics, discourse, semantics, and stylistics.

But it is nature of Arabic to use ellipsis as indicated above.

Unlike English, several clauses can be ellipted at a time in Arabic, namely in the Qur’anic context with no effect on meaning.