Tuesday, June 23, 2015

ellipsis - Delete the phrase "I'm" from the sentence by native speaker




I hear many native speakers say, for example, "glad to connect" or "Not sure about that". Where they delete "I am" at the beginning of the sentence, Is that kind of "short the talk", I mean to speak a fewer words, or it has a conditions/rules to delete those words?



Answer



In informal speech, pronouns may sometimes be removed in sentences, together with some other words, especially copulas and auxiliaries:



[Have you] ever been there? [I'm] going to the shops. [Do you] want to come?


Seen on signs: [I am/We are] out to lunch; [I/we will be] back at 1:00 [P.M].



In speech, when pronouns are not dropped, they are more often elided than other words in an utterance.


You asked whether there is a rule or not. As you see in some examples presented above, this type of removal mostly happen to 'you' as the subject and the auxiliary preceding it in yes/no questions e.g.




'[Do you] want to come?'



and 'I' when it's the subject in a sentence and the auxiliary following it e.g your friend's calling your name and you say,



'[I'm] coming!'



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