Ellipsis as a means of expression economy in the language of Roman Ivanychuk's novels

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of elliptical structures, which serve as one of the means of expressive syntax. Elliptical sentences are relatively incomplete from a structural-syntactic perspective yet semantically complete. This duality reveals their unique nature and distinctiveness. The structural organization of elliptical constructions prioritizes the author’s aim to closely replicate natural dialogue between characters, thereby authentically and vividly conveying the nuances of communication. This approach seeks to capture the spirit of natural speech. A key factor in the frequent use of elliptical sentences is the linguistic tendency toward economizing language resources and creating compressed expressions. Elliptical sentences, whose incompleteness manifests only at the structural level, do not require the specification of an omitted component for semantic clarity. It has been established that substituting incomplete sentences with grammatically complete ones results in information overload and a slower speech tempo. The study examines the novels «The Crane’s Cry» and «Janissaries» by Roman Ivanychuk, works of historical prose that offer an opportunity to trace the evolution of the author's style. The research highlights the functional manifestations of elliptical sentences in the author's linguistic creativity, emphasizing their importance for further study, thereby underscoring the relevance of the research. It has been proven that the most common types of elliptical structures in the author’s historical prose are sentences with an unexpressed predicate. Observations reveal that elliptical constructions most often feature an unfilled position for existential verbs. In such sentences, the implicit verbal semantics require one or more specifying words, unlike verbs with absolute semantics, which are expressed by monovalent verbs without additional modifiers. These sentences are characterized by their elevated tone, dynamizing natural speech and reflecting its authenticity. The omission of the subject in the author’s historical texts is much less frequent than that of the predicate. The subject is typically omitted when it is contextually clear from the relationship between the elliptical sentence and an adjacent, usually complete, sentence. Such sentences have less varied semantics but remain expressive, emotional, and fulfill specific stylistic functions. A separate group of elliptical sentences includes interrogative constructions with an unfilled predicate position of varying semantics. From a stylistic perspective, questions in the analyzed texts are significant not only as material for constructing the narrative but also as a means of emphasizing the idea and focusing the reader’s attention on key moments. The article identifies the functional significance of the analyzed constructions in terms of their artistic expression of the author’s ideas.