Beansprout Reits

Introduction to Hospitality Management

Wall Street Journal Index

The Syntax of Silence

A primary goal of contemporary theoretical linguistics is to develop a theory of the correspondence between sound (or gesture) and meaning. This sound-meaning correspondence breaks down completely in the case of ellipsis, and yet various forms of ellipsis are pervasive in natural language: words and phrases which should be in the linguistic signal go missing. How this should be possible is the focus of Jason Merchant's investigation. He focuses on the form of ellipsis known as sluicing, a common feature of interrogative clauses, such as in Sally's out hunting - guess what ; and Someone called, but I can't tell you who. It is the most frequently found cross-linguistic form of ellipsis. Dr Merchant studies the phenomenon across 24 languages, and attempts to explain it in linguistic and behavioural terms.