How Do We Understand Missing Words? Ellipsis

What can silence tell us about the syntax of a sentence? How do we know what meaning to fill in when words are missing? In this week's episode, we talk about ellipsis: what rules are at work to tell us how to use it, how sentence structure plays into what words we can leave out, and whether words are even missing at all, or just hiding.
This is Topic #94!
This week's tag language: Scots Gaelic!
Related videos:
How Can Sentences Look Like Adjectives? Relative Clauses: • How Can Sentences Work...
What Makes a Basic Sentence? A History of Clauses: • What Makes a Basic Sen...
How Can We Tell What Roles Nouns Play? Case Theory: • How Can We Tell What R...
Last episode:
Who Is She? The Syntax of Pronouns: • Who Is She? The Syntax...
Other of our morphosyntax videos:
What Does Possession Tell Us About Syntax? The DP Hypothesis: • What Does Possession T...
What Kinds of Pieces Do We Use to Build Words? Derivation and Inflection: • What Kinds of Pieces D...
What Changes in a Sentence When We Swap Verbs? Raising vs. Control: • What Changes in a Sent...
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, on why objects tend to stay put in English, at: www.thelingspace.com/episode-94/
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: / thelingspace
Twitter: / thelingspace
Facebook: / thelingspace
And at our website, www.thelingspace.com/ !
You can also find our store at the website, thelingspace.storenvy.com/
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
Much of the discussion here is based on Andrew Carnie's Syntax: A Generative Introduction, 3rd edition, as well as his dissertation, which can be found at: dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~carnie/...
We also used Jason Merchant's survey of different approaches to ellipsis: home.uchicago.edu/merchant/pub...
We also consulted Brendan Gillon's upcoming book, Natural Language Semantics: mitpress.mit.edu/books/natural...
And the Wikipedia page on ellipsis is a pretty helpful place to start! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis...)
Looking forward to next time!

[@deighcheeneamar7175]

You deserve all subscribers

[@Fussfackel]

Thx from Germany! I have been watching your videos throughout my undergraduate studies in Anglistics and I continue my master's degree now. Nice to see there is still more content coming.

[@ailenbasualdo3016]

Hey! I love your videos. I'm from Argentina and I'm studying to become an English teacher. I must say that your videos have helped me not only to understand certain topics included in my exams, but also to know more things and get into the linguistics' world. Don't ever stop updating your channel!

[@rhubarb4601]

I was missing your short lectures. Thank you for this one. Regards from a English learner in Spain.

[@SilverHandel]

I've been waiting for this video. Keep up the good work.

[@thelingspace]

Thanks! We'll do our best. ^_^

[@sarahmostafa5497]

Welcome back....one of the best channels out there well done 💖

[@kira7573]

So glad you're back!! Love your stuff

[@Pakanahymni]

It's been ages!

[@thelingspace]

Yeah, we're glad to be back, though! It's nice to share things again. ^_^

[@elainebarbosa2654]

I love this channel! I hope I can study linguistics when I go back to Brazil!

[@JuhlHolsegaard]

Remember to check if they are functionalists or formalists, ling spaces seems to be mostly if not entirely formalist

[@thelingspace]

Thanks for the kind words! We really appreciate it. I hope you can study it more, too!

[@RonLWilson]

Wow, great... or should I instead say, this video is really great... or should I say instead, this video is really great.

[@sheepphic]

This is a little odd and kind of a half-formed idea, but ellipsis seems similar to partial application in lambda calculus in certain circumstances; for example, in the sentence "Erica ate popcorn, but Shaun didn't", it's like the lambda expression (I'm going to use Haskell's syntax of denoting lambda with \ for the sake of convenience) "\x . \y . x ate y" is partially applied to "popcorn", and then that new function "\x . x ate popcorn" is then applied to both Erica and Shaun; I don't know, maybe this is not a useful comparison, but it's what leapt to my mind when I tried to guess what the explanation presented in the video would be.

[@eruyommo]

I finish a mind breaking video about the most awkward physics only to get into Moti using weird sentences like those at the very first thirty seconds. I guess I like headaches.

[@thelingspace]

Thanks for trying it, regardless! Next time out will be simpler sentences, if that helps. It's going to be a phonology episode, so it'll be more about sounds. ^_^

[@eruyommo]

@@thelingspace Oh. I didn't try, I did understand. However I had to hear most sentences like three or four times. But that's the nature of generativism: It's the quantum physics of linguistics.

[@jamieyoung3770]

I listened to the beginning again, and I found appreciation for what he conveyed. This is because I sometimes get disturbed by pregnant pauses, and all they imply. Delayed meaning, it is harsh stuff to me. That it intersects with the theory of linguistics, I found that helpful to learn. And yes, I do weird sentences too.

[@frankharr9466]

I SO wanted Prove Innocent to wind up being a thing and Shane another thing that just happens to side in the middle of it. I'm glad something happened that's just a little like that. :D

[@abdallahoufkir5312]

hey Sir I am new subscriber keep on thanks for This❤

[@sugarfrosted2005]

Cicadas already. :p

[@thelingspace]

Please know I have tried very hard to avoid making a Japanese cicada pun here. ^_^