Sunday, March 29, 2015

ellipsis - "Anyone have an extra apartment there?"



Anyone have an extra apartment there?



This quote is from an English native speaker. Why "anyone have"?


This could be an elliptical question, but I'd expect native speakers to ask a question using an affirmative sentence as in:



Anyone knows what happened?



Here is the full quote:




Friends. Hi! Sitting here on a Friday night brainstorming honeymoon options with David. Who has ideas?!? Where is a great place to visit at the end of March? We have ideas all over the place. One option we are thinking about Paris ... anyone have an extra apartment there?



If it is an elliptical question, what do you think is more common in everyday spoken English? Elliptical or questions in affirmative forms?


Edit:


Thanks to everyone for answering. I was looking for the full meaning and etymology of an idiom when I came across this quote which serves as a real world example:



In Reply to: (Correcting omission) posted by R. Berg on February 25, 2003


: : : Anyone know the origin of the idiom or phrase "Throw the book at em." I realize it means prosecute someone to the fullest extent of the law, a law enforcement term, but does anyone really know where it came from and when it first began being used?





Answer



This is conversational deletion, which John Lawler has addressed on ELU.


Briefly, this is a 'rule' of conversational English which says that a speaker can chop off elementsat the beginning of an utterance which may be inferred from the context—primarily function words, "articles, dummies, auxiliaries, possessives, conditional if, and ... subject pronouns". In your example:



Does anyone have an extra apartment there?



Have stays in the infinitive, because the does is inferred. This might also be expressed



Has anyone got an extra apartment there?




If the subject is inferrable, that can go, too:



Have you got a spare pen?
Will you have a drink?



But as Prof. Lawler says,



this phenomenon only occurs in speaking English, and in other informal communication systems like email and txting that work like speech. It is not good formal written style, except for reporting dialog in a story.



No comments:

Post a Comment

Simple past, Present perfect Past perfect

Can you tell me which form of the following sentences is the correct one please? Imagine two friends discussing the gym... I was in a good s...