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Ellipsis query..

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by mohish » Thu Oct 28, 2010 2:33 am
Hello,

Please look at the following sentence:

The utility of my bike is better than your bike.

I would think that this is a perfect case of ellipsis and we can easily interpret the above sentence as:

The utility of my bike is better than [the utility of] your bike.

Please advice.

Thanks in advance
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by gmat_perfect » Thu Oct 28, 2010 3:49 am
mohish wrote:Hello,

Please look at the following sentence:

The utility of my bike is better than your bike.

I would think that this is a perfect case of ellipsis and we can easily interpret the above sentence as:

The utility of my bike is better than [the utility of] your bike.

Please advice.

Thanks in advance
What is your question?

The sentence can be written as:

The utility of my bike is better than that of your bike.

==> that = the utility
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by mohish » Sun Oct 31, 2010 10:02 am
My question is as to why we can't just say:

The utility of my bike is better than your bike.

Ellipsis is all about 'implying' the exact words in the first half of the sentence. So, we must be able to interpret the above sentence as:

The utility of my bike is better than [utility of] your bike.

Can someone please quote an example from OG which proves to the contrary.
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by Jim@Grockit » Mon Nov 01, 2010 8:24 pm
mohish wrote:My question is as to why we can't just say:

The utility of my bike is better than your bike.

Ellipsis is all about 'implying' the exact words in the first half of the sentence. So, we must be able to interpret the above sentence as:

The utility of my bike is better than [utility of] your bike.

Can someone please quote an example from OG which proves to the contrary.
I don't have the OG memorized, but I can give you a better example of why I think you can't do that:

The interest on my savings is better than your savings.

Does that sentence mean that my interest is greater than your interest, or that my interest alone is greater than your entire savings?
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by mohish » Tue Nov 02, 2010 1:23 am
We can interpret it either way and 'hence' we can't use ellipsis in this sentence.

But I would think there is no such quandary in the following:

The utility of my bike is better than your bike.

This is perhaps similar to:

Caroline likes rose more than lotus.

The above sentence can't be interpreted as:

Caroline likes rose more than lotus likes rose.
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