LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 26:1 January 2026
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Verbal Noun Ellipsis in Meeteilon

Huiningshumbam Surchandra Singh, Ph.D.

Abstract

The present paper is an attempt to explore how the verbal noun ellipsis in Meeteilon takes place in a discourse and its role in making a cohesive Meeteilon discourse. This kind of ellipsis is generally found to be taking place in different kinds of sentence like assertive, interrogative and negative sentence. The constituents that remain when there is a verbal noun ellipsis in an utterance are the subject of the elliptical verbal noun and the lexical negator n?tte. When there is an elliptical verbal noun in an utterance the copulative marker -ni, interrogative marker -la~-raand the inquisitive marker -no are the constituents that are affixed to the subject and the interrogative words. The elliptical verbal noun gets its interpretation through the presupposed verb or verbal noun which is somewhere within the discourse.

Keywords:Ellipsis, verbal noun, cohesion, presupposition, discourse.

Introduction

Meeteilon is the first language of the people in the valley of Manipur and the second language of those for whom Meeteilon is not their mother tongue. It is the only medium of communication among the speakers of the different languages inhabiting in the hilly areas of Manipur. So, it is a lingua-franca of the state. It is one of the Tibeto-Burman languages of Sino-Tibetan family which is placed under the Kuki-Chin proper separately by Grierson (1904), and in Meitei branch of Kukish section by Shafer (1974). It is also spoken in some other places of India like Assam, Tripura and in some other countries such as Myanmar and Bangladesh. Meeteilon had been included in the eighth schedule by the 71st amendment of the Indian Constitution on 20thAugust, 1992.

Verbal noun ellipsis means the removal of the verbal noun in the predicate of an utterance. The characteristic function of ellipsis is that of cohesion by presupposition (Halliday and Hasan, 1976). An elliptical verbal noun presupposes the verbal form or a verbal noun which is in the preceding part of the discourse. The elliptical verbal noun has to be recovered from this presupposed verbal form or the verbal noun. The Meeteilon speakers use the elliptical verbal noun in a particular context having been understood by both the speaker and the hearer. When the elliptical verbal noun presupposes the verbal form or verbal noun which is in the preceding part of the discourse, and this elliptical verbal noun finds its interpretation through the presupposed verbal form or verbal noun, it should be treated as a cohesive device and helps a lot in bringing cohesion to the discourse.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Huiningshumbam Surchandra Singh, Ph.D.
Department of Linguistics, Manipur University
hsurchandra14@gmail.com
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