La elipsis en la 'Sintaxis figurada' de las Gramáticas de la lengua castellana dieciochescas de la Real Academia Española

Abstract

Ellipsis, understood as the omission of recoverable elements in the communicative exchange and which, as such, does not affect the meaning or the grammaticality of the message, is a phenomenon with a long tradition in rhetorical and grammatical studies. For this reason, we consider its study especially important from a grammatical perspective. Thus, this analysis focuses on the grammatical works produced by the Royal Spanish Academy during the 18th century, comparing the four official editions of the century (Gramática de la lengua castellana de 1771, 1772, 1781 and 1796), together with the unofficial one that was published in Manila. Likewise, this comparison has allowed us to assess works that could influence these academic works, such as Sánchez de las Brozas (1587), Correas (1626), Jiménez Patón (1604), Juan Villar (1651), Martínez Gómez Gayoso (1743) or Benedict of Saint Peter (1769); as well as later ones such as Torío de la Riva Herrero (1798), Pelegrín (1825) or Alemany (1838), and even the Gramáticas de la RAE of the following century. Consequently, this analysis has led us to inquire about the disappearance in grammatical studies of the zeugma, a phenomenon until then inseparable from ellipsis. This absence contrasts, as we will see, with the vision offered in lexicographical works. All in all, as a result of the analysis, we have observed an interesting change in the pejorative assessment that was offered in the first Grammars, but few variations in terms of the examples, which will increase in number and complexity in the nineteenth-century productions.