Semantic Ellipsis in Chinese

[noerml]

Hello I'm doing some research on Ellipsis and I am hopeful that someone here can help me.

I read (in a book written by Marjorie J. McShane; A Theory of Ellipsis) that there are some restrictions to semantic ellipsis in chinese.

While in English it is not only possible but common to say:

(1) I'm reading Tolstoy

(actually meaning: I am reading a book written by Tolstoy)

a literal translation of the same sentence would not work in Chinese. You would have to inclue that it is a book you are reading.

Can anyone give me an example for both sentences with a transliteration in pinyin and possibly a gloss. In other

words a translation of the grammatically correct sentence and of the sentence that does not work.

a friend translated the correct version for me as:

Eng: I am reading a Tolstoy book now.

Chi:我正在看一本尔斯泰的书。

Pinyin：?

Hope someone here can fill in the blancs and help me along in my research

Cheers and thanks in advance!

[skylee]

1)" I am reading Tolstoy" works in Chinese. In Chinese you don't necessarily have to add "a book of" either.

2) The character 托 is missing from the Chinese version above. It should be 我正在看一本托尔斯泰的书。Becauseof point 1, you can say 我正在看托尔斯泰 and the sentence is still OK.

3) I think you can get the pinyin from mdbg.net.

[abcdefg]

Chinese uses lots and lots of elipsis in daily speech. I am no scholar, but it always trips me up. Last night was talking with a local friend whose father is a retired military physician. I would have said 退休军队医生, but she shortened military physician it to 军医.

Chinese daily speech is quite efficient, and very frequently eliminates words that interlocutors can be expected to guess. I'm sure others here can give you many more examples.

[noerml]

Thanks for you answers so far. Well, ellipsis in spoken language, i.e. daily speech is altogether a different (and much more complex) thing.

Right now I am more interested in a textbook answer. "I am Reading Tolstoy" or "I forgot my keys" (what you actually forget is BRINGING the keys) is totally acceptable in English.

It is a sentence you would understand in any context whatsoever, even without a context. Does the same aply to chinese? Is an author a possible direct object for the transitive verb <read>.

thanks for the link skylee. However i also kinda need an interlinear gloss. But i guess it wouldn't extend beyond the "english definitions" anyhow?

[yialanliu]

我在看Tolstoy。Works perfectly well in speech.

In Chinese, there's a certain 4 character phrase type that is really shortening of words. I believe the category is 并列。