18. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken anything from books, since there were no books for him to copy from.—Bagehot.
CHAPTER XXXIII
ELLIPTICAL SENTENCES
In preceding chapters we have spoken of the tendency in English speech and composition towards abridgment. Independent propositions become clauses, clauses become phrases, and phrases give place to words. This tendency to abbreviate the expression of thought is due to two causes: (1) a predominating interest in one’s ideas and a minor interest in the expression. In such a case one uses only the significant words, leaving out all those that can be supplied by the reader. (2) A desire to be impressive, to gain and keep the reader’s attention. At such times one rejects all unnecessary words as distracting attention from the main purpose and retarding the progress of the main thought. The result of either of these causes is an elliptical sentence—one that cannot be analyzed without supplying certain elements necessary to its grammatical structure.
Elliptical sentences are very common. Some of them have been already mentioned in different chapters, for instance, the common idiom, “I cannot but think.” Some other ellipses we shall make the subject of inquiry in the present chapter, and for convenience we shall take them up as ellipses in subordinate propositions and ellipses in principal propositions.
Ellipses in Subordinate Propositions.—
1. An elliptical adjective clause; as,—
“A sound as of myriads singing
From far and near stole in.”—Whittier.
This ellipsis comes about through the omission of (1) the correlative of as, which in this case is such, (2) the noun sound, which can easily be supplied from the principal proposition, and (3) the verb is. Expanded the sentence reads,—“Such a sound as a sound of myriads singing is, from far and near stole in.”