Wednesday, April 5, 2017

etymology - What do you call a past participle+noun construction clause such as “No offense meant” “Your point taken,” “With that said,” and “Given that”?



In reference to my question about the usage of “No offense meant/taken,” I noticed that there are a lot of shortened forms like “No offense meant/taken,” “Your point taken,” “That said,” and “Given that” used in place of statements like “I don’t mean to offend you / I don’t take it for your offense,” “I’d take your point (correctly),” “As I said that,” “Under the given situation (condition, statement, fact, story, and so on).” .”



When did these shortened forms come into currency or vogue? Did they surge because the tide of modern time requires speed and shortened form of expression?



Is there specific grammatical terminology to describe such a “noun+past participle (or passive verb form)," or vice versa contracted construction clause?


Answer




These are of a number of types, but what they all have in common is that predictable chunks of a sentence have been left out because they are predictable (to native speakers).



In order, with something like the deleted material in boldface:




  1. No offense meant/taken. = No offense was meant (or taken) by what I (or you) just said.


  2. Point taken. = I have heard and understood the point of what you just said.


  3. That said, = Now that that has been said, let me continue in a different vein.

  4. Given that, = Given that topic we just mentioned,




There is no general term for rules that do this, like To be-Deletion, Whiz Deletion, Conjunction Reduction, Conversational Deletion, etc. They are deletion rules, obviously, but far from the only ones.


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