Optimising elliptical utterances in dialogue

Abstract

Elliptical utterances in dialogue are here investigated using Optimality Theory (OT). The focus is on generation, and the analysis as well as the examples used are based on a study of elliptical utterances in corpora of recorded dialogues. The OT analysis makes use of the information structural notions of focus and ground. Two important optimisations of elliptical utterances are investigated. One concerns the optimisation of the part of the context that the elliptical utterance is connected to, and the other concerns the determination of whether an elliptical or a non-elliptical utterance is to be produced.

Tacit but understood? A first immersion in ellipsis in Argentine colloquial interaction

“…Además, en la interacción oral el antecedente es, a menudo, una entidad externa disponible en el contexto situacional pero no expresada verbalmente (ALCÁNTARA Y BERTOMEU, 2005), por lo que se han identificado dos tipos principales de elipsis: 1) elipsis sistémica, frente a 2) elipsis textual. A continuación, se presenta una panorámica de las propiedades de cada una, como resumen de las observaciones introducidas por diferentes autores (DANEŠ, 1971;ŠTÍCHA, 1989;HENDRIKS Y SPENADER, 2005; ALCÁNTARA Y BERTOMEU, 2005;ERICSSON, 2005;BRUCART, 1999;GALLEGO, 2011;WINKLER, 2005):…”