What is the reason that articles, which are necessary in the case of complete sentences, are otherwise left out, as in "That's a good question," versus "Good question," "I wish you a happy new year," vs "Happy New Year," etc., etc.?
2007-12-23 20:12:42 · 3 answers · asked by Tanaka 4 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Those are elisions. In writing they occur, but require some external knowledge.
Some elisions are very common. For example, "Good day" doesn't require the complete thought in front of it. I could say, "I wish you a good day." You (the listener) understand that I'm talking to you and the context makes it clear that the "I wish you" part is unnecessary.
Other contexts frequently use conversation that is written:
Bob asked, "What are you doing?"
Betty replied. "Nothing."
This is acceptable, if a bit simple. To be grammatically correct, Betty should have replied, "I am doing nothing." But in this context, you (the reader) understand that Betty's one-word utterance is a complete thought.
Some writers (Elmore Leonard comes to mind) are very good at conveying a lot of thought with very few words.
2007-12-23 20:36:06 · answer #1 · answered by going_for_baroque 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It's simply a shortened form of regularly used expressions: I wish you a good morning > Good morning, etc. You see the same in other Indo-European languages: Feliz Navidad, Joyeux Noel, etc = Happy Christmas.
2007-12-23 20:32:52 · answer #2 · answered by JJ 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Its the nuance between spoken and written really. It all boils done to if they we're writing it correctly it would be the former, but people tend to leave things out in everyday speech and incorrectly transfer these losses down to paper. Go figure
2007-12-24 04:20:28 · answer #3 · answered by poetressus 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋