Verb phrase ellipsis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (June 2008) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (November 2006)

In linguistics, verb phrase ellipsis (or VPE for short) is an elliptical construction in which the verb of a sentence or utterance has been left out (ellided). In most cases the verb is able to be inferred by the listener through prior linguistic context. Examples of verb phrase ellipses in English include:

I always tell Mary to do the dishes, but she never does [do the dishes].

I tried to find the missing check, but couldn't [find the missing check].