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Abstract Abstract: As a realization form of language economy, ellipsis seeks the foundation in cognition and pragmatics for its “production and comprehension”. The realization of speaker’s pragmatic purpose is closely related to his cognitive operations including the choice of conceptual contents and particular forms of language coding. Based on the spoken English reference corpus of the native English speakers, this study investigates the distribution of ellipsis and cognitive pragmatic motivations of English majors in China. It is found that the proportion of clause ellipsis is lower, while the proportion of paratactic phrase ellipsis and percentage of antecedent recurrence are higher than that of the native speakers. Based on the interviews, the authors found that Experience View, Prominence View and Attention View are the cognitive motivations of uttering ellipsis expressions and the ellipsis production is in line with the principle of least effort and economy. When confronted with the restrictions of the second language resources or the realization of certain pragmatic purpose, the speaker uses antecedent recurrence to organize the information for the sake of the hearer’s understanding.
Key Words: ellipsis; spoken English; cognitive pragmatics
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