Whiz deletion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In linguistics, whiz deletion is a form of ellipsis common in the English language in which a relative pronoun and a form of the verb “to be” are both deleted.
- Mark Twain, who is generally considered the greatest American humorist, was from Hannibal Missouri.
- The Crystal Palace, which had been built to house London's Great Exposition of 1851, was destroyed by fire in 1936.
- Whiz deletion is a form of ellipsis that is common in the English language.
Etymology
The term “whiz deletion” is a portmanteau pun stemming from the fact that several of the relative pronouns in English start with “wh-“ and from the is form of “to be.”[1]: 145
Significance in transformational grammar
Whiz deletion is analyzed by Langendoen as a transformational reduction of relative clauses[1]: 145–147 [2] that—together with another transformation, which moves adjectives in front of the noun phrases they modify—explains many occurrences of attributive adjectives. On this analysis, for example, whiz deletion transforms the sentence
- 1. Wiring that is faulty causes many fires.
into
- 2. *Wiring faulty causes many fires.
And then the fact that the deletion left behind a bare adjective (namely, faulty) triggers the adjective-preposing transformation, which produces the final (surface) form
- 3. Faulty wiring causes many fires.