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Example:

I fell in love the moment I saw her.

Is this considered grammatical as it is, or is it some kind of ellipsis?

tchrist
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William
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    At is deleted before moment (because it's replaceable salva veritate); also that (or when) is deleted before I. – John Lawler Nov 01 '15 at 20:26
  • @JohnLawler: So, are we talking elliptic or elided? Don – rhetorician Nov 01 '15 at 20:43
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    There's no grammatical distinction. If a word is present in one version and missing in another, I'd say it's been "deleted". "Elision" is normally used in talking about sounds, not syntax. And I don't use "elliptic" for anything that doesn't involve a polynomial. – John Lawler Nov 01 '15 at 20:48
  • I'm concerned that you imply that 'grammatical' and '[deleted form]' are disjoint concepts. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 01 '15 at 22:20
  • @JohnLawler: I was using the word "elliptic" in the sense of--or relating to--extreme economy of oral or written expression. Now the elision of "at" and "that" may not constitute extreme economy, since the shortened sentence doesn't become telegraphic. It does, however, make the sentence shorter, n'est-ce-pas? Don – rhetorician Nov 02 '15 at 00:12
  • @EdwinAshworth Yes, get your point, but it's extremely hard to frame correctly. I'm guessing OP means is it understood as having some kind of ellipsis (where because we fill it in with the missing material it's grammatical), or is it complete in itself and therefore grammatical? Unlike JL, I'd go with the latter. In my book, the former's the syntactic parallel to the etymological fallacy ... but that's just mo. – Araucaria - Him Nov 02 '15 at 00:45
  • @Edwin: By "there's no grammatical distinction" I meant "there's no distinction in grammaticality". rheto: Linguistically speaking, "elliptic" is not really well-defined, even if it's only a maximum value -- there are many ways to delete things from utterances, and they're all governed by rules (two different rules in the case in point). Who's to say what's "extreme"? – John Lawler Nov 02 '15 at 01:13
  • @John Lawler I think you were answering rhetorician in your second comment? (I was addressing William.) But I'm sure you're correct about a gradience of acceptability. 'I looked out the window' didn't sound too outlandish when on a recent mixed-nationality coach tour of the SW. Is 'Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read' an example of the opposite of a deletion? – Edwin Ashworth Nov 02 '15 at 11:16
  • Well, the it is inserted by Extraposition, if that's what you're asking about. Generally there are four types of syntactic rules by operation: deletion, insertion, copying, and movement (which can be analyzed as copy + delete if desired). There isn't really a single opposite of deletion. – John Lawler Nov 02 '15 at 19:20
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    Does this answer your question? Is the "live" in "He only lived a few days after the accident" intransitive or transitive? – Edwin Ashworth Dec 02 '23 at 15:54

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According to Huddleston & Pullum (2002), "the moment I saw here" is a noun phrase acting as a temporal location adjunct (p. 698); in more traditional terminology, you might say it's being used adverbially.

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