In an effort to reduce their inventories, Italian

[uytrebla]

OG, 9th edition

 

# 129. In an effort to reduce their inventories, Italian vintners have cut prices; their wines have been priced to sell, and they are.

 

correct sentence:

 

are priced to sell, and they do.

 

Question: I am confused by the sentence after ";", especially the phrase and they do.

 

Thank you for your help.

[Erin]

Albert,

 

The most important rule we need to remember for this question is one of the rules of ellipsis:

 

If you omit a word in a sentence, that word must have already appeared in the sentence.

 

In this question, the original version, if "un-ellipsed," would look like this:

 

In an effort to reduce their inventories, Italian vintners have cut prices; their wines have been priced to sell, and they are selling.

 

You will notice that the ellipsed word is selling, but this word does NOT appear in the sentence before.

 

In the correct answer choice, we use do to substitute sell. Remember, do can be used to replace a verb phrase, as in the sentence, She thinks I don't care about my grades, but I do. In this sentence, do replaces care.

 

Make sense?

[sankp]

Albert,

 

The most important rule we need to remember for this question is one of the rules of ellipsis:

 

If you omit a word in a sentence, that word must have already appeared in the sentence.

 

In this question, the original version, if "un-ellipsed," would look like this:

 

In an effort to reduce their inventories, Italian vintners have cut prices; their wines have been priced to sell, and they are selling.

 

You will notice that the ellipsed word is selling, but this word does NOT appear in the sentence before.

 

In the correct answer choice, we use do to substitute sell. Remember, do can be used to replace a verb phrase, as in the sentence, She thinks I don't care about my grades, but I do. In this sentence, do replaces care.

 

Make sense?

 

 

I am going through Erin's old post. This is absolutly amazing.

 

But I have one doubt...

 

Please see this question..

 

 

Beaded wedding gowns are so expensive because the seamstress still pursues her art as they have for centuries, by hand-stringing each bead and then knotting each thread individually to achieve a secure attachment for each bead.

 

(A) the seamstress still pursues her art as they have

(B) the seamstress still pursues her art as she has

© seamstresses still pursue their art as they have

(D) seamstresses still pursue their art as was done

(E) the seamstress still pursues her art as has been done

 

The answer is C.

 

The complete construction will be

 

Beaded wedding gowns are so expensive because seamstresses still pursue their art as they have (done) , by hand-stringing each bead and then knotting each thread individually to achieve a secure attachment for each bead

 

'done' should replace the perfect tense 'pursuded'. But 'persuded' is not appearing in the sentence before..

 

Also look at the following sentences..

1) The Americans are reducing their defence expenditure this year. I wonder if the Russians will do too [ Here 'do' replaces 'reduce'- not appearing in the sentence]

 

2) I didn't touch the television set; but Sam might have done [ Here 'done' replaces 'touched'- not appearing in the sentence]

 

I am defintly missing something. Can anybody help me understand the grammer point

[sankp]

Can anybody please help!!!!

[dwivedys]

The seamstresses still PURSUE their art as they HAVE for &c

 

Here HAVE replaces PURSUE. Although I am not an expert on Ellipsis and I will look forward to Erin to substantiate this - but to your point Sankp, in ellipsis we are concerned with replacing the BASE form of the VERB. Thus even though "pursue" does not appear it does not matter because it is actually PURSUED that your replacing in the earlier part of the sentence.

 

The same holds for your american-russian example. The americans are REDUCING their defense expenditures. Wonder if the RUSSIANS will do too. Here the DO replaces REDUCING in the previous sentence. Even though it is understood that in the Russians part the DO means whether the RUSSIANS WILL REDUCE TOO. So yes REDUCE does not appear previously. But as I said concentrate on the BASE FORM of the verb to be replaced. In the American example the BASE FORM is REDUCE.

 

HTH.

[sankp]

The seamstresses still PURSUE their art as they HAVE for &c

 

Here HAVE replaces PURSUE. Although I am not an expert on Ellipsis and I will look forward to Erin to substantiate this - but to your point Sankp, in ellipsis we are concerned with replacing the BASE form of the VERB. Thus even though "pursue" does not appear it does not matter because it is actually PURSUED that your replacing in the earlier part of the sentence.

 

The same holds for your american-russian example. The americans are REDUCING their defense expenditures. Wonder if the RUSSIANS will do too. Here the DO replaces REDUCING in the previous sentence. Even though it is understood that in the Russians part the DO means whether the RUSSIANS WILL REDUCE TOO. So yes REDUCE does not appear previously. But as I said concentrate on the BASE FORM of the verb to be replaced. In the American example the BASE FORM is REDUCE.

 

HTH.

 

Thanks dwivedys for your respone.

 

In the "seamstress" example are you sure that "have" is replacing the "pursue"? My understanding was "have" can not replace base verb, but "DO" can. This is called pro-form.

 

Now if you see the second example,

 

2) I didn't touch the television set; but Sam might have = I didn't touch the television set; but Sam might have

 

Here 'done' can be ellipted. But the base verb (touch) is replaced by 'done', not by 'have'.

 

Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

Regards,

[dwivedys]

I think I now understand what's confusing you and I am sorry for having compounded your confusion thanks to my previous post.

 

Consider..

 

The seamstresses still pursue their art as they have [pursued] for centuries........

 

"pursued" of course is NOT present anywhere in the sentence. Now here comes YOUR doubt sankp. According to Erin the word being DROPPED (or Ellipsed) must have appeared once earlier. However, "pursued" which has been dropped has NOT appeared earlier. So how can it be replaced? That's your question, right? (Meanwhile please take note that DONE, as you have indicated is NOT the word being DROPPED from the seamstress example. I have explained this down below in another example).

 

OK here's the deal - what should be the full expanded form (without ellipsis)

 

The seamstresses still PURSUE their art as they have [PURSUED] for centuries........

 

Here the "have" is replacing "pursued" and my point was that even though PURSUED is NOT exactly the same as PURSUE, yet all you should worry about is replacing the BASE/INFINITIVE form of the VERB which is PURSUE in this case and has actually appeared earlier in that sentence.

 

Another example - their wines are priced to sell and they do.

 

Now here the "do" replaces "sell" even though sell is in its INFINITIVE FORM.

 

Thus you will see that both HAVE and DO are capable of replacing the base forms of the verbs.

 

I didn't touch the television set; but Sam might have . Here actually again is not correct. The ellipsed form should have been

 

Sam might have . And of course the HAVE replaces the TOUCHED whose base form TOUCH appears earlier.

 

Hope that helps.

Saurabh.

[sankp]

I beg to differ with you on this particular issue.May be I am trying to understand very hard but can not...

 

What about this sentence------

 

He never has, and never will, take such strong measure.

 

Why this sentence is then wrong? Even though, here "has" is replacing "taken" and BASE/INFINITIVE form of the VERB which is "take" in this case and has actually appeared in the sentence.

 

Why the Corrected sentence is then---

 

He never has taken, and never will take, such strong measure.

 

I understand that you are trying to make me understand. But somehow I am missing some important grammer point. Please help me....

 

Regards,

[dwivedys]

Hey Sankp - I admire your questions buddy and I wish I was an expert!

But I'll try to take this one too.

 

The seamstresses still PURSUE their art as they have [PURSUED] for centuries..

 

Here have replaces PURSUE which has appeared BEFORE in the sentence. So the placement of the VERB to be replaced plays a crucial role.

 

I have a strong feeling that the rule of ellipsis works on words that have ALREADY appeared PRIOR to them being replaced. In the seamstress example as well as the other examples in your previous posts, the HAS or DO replaced the VERBS that had appeared EARLIER in the sentence. In short the ELLIPSED verb should PRECEDE the word ELLIPSING it.

 

In your example

 

He never has, and never will, take such strong measure.

The rule of ellipsis will not work because the verb "take" is appearing in the predicate; I haven't heard of any rule that makes it possible to REDUCE a VERB from a dependent clause and push the verb out to the independent clause.

 

Having said that however, a rule similar to ellipsis is the rule of REDUCING ADVERB CLAUSES to adverbial phrases when the subject for dependent and independent clauses is the same. In this situation you can DROP the subject from the Dependent clause and convert it into a DEPENDENT phrase. The independent clause will retain the subject.

 

I will try to do some more reasearch on this and let you know. Unless of course Erin or Vreddy could comment and enlighten us.

 

Thanks

Saurabh.

[abhishek_jha]

In comparing the inventory question and this one, please notice that there's a change of tense in the second one, consequent to which there should be a change in the form of the verb.