The Motivation of Ellipsis

The article seeks the motivations of ellipsis from three perspectives: physiology, cognition and pragmatics. In total, there are seven principles which can account for necessity, reasonability, usefulness and importance of ellipsis. These principles constitute the motivations of ellipsis including the principle of information efficiency coding, the principle of information constancy, the principle of cognitive economy, the principle of prominence, cooperative principle, relevance theory and the principle of intentionality. Index Terms--ellipsis, motivation, physiological principle, cognitive principle, pragmatic principle