[nelson13]

In the sentence 'I like European culture and Asian', why can't I say that this sentence is correct because there is an omitted word 'culture' after ASIAN? Is it because only THE can perform an ellipsis role? like saying 'I like the ancient English language and the modern'.

[susan53]

Sorry - I don't quite understand the question. The sentence is fine. I could imagine it being said, for example, in a context where there was contrastive stress on "and" :

A : I don't understand why you always prefer European culture to Asian.
B : But I don't - I like European culture AND Asian.

There are certainly other possible versions of the sentence - eg

I like European culture and Asian culture, too.

which might be more frequently heard. In general when ellipsis happens in clauses after co-ordinators like "and", anything which is the same in the second clause as in the first can be ellipted - ie omitted. The clause thus starts at the first "different" word. Here the full clauses are :

I like European culture, and I like Asian culture too.

"I like" can therefore be ellipted. The first "different " word is "Asian", so everything that follows is included. In writing it would probably be most usual to use this version. But, particularly in speech, it would also be possible to omit other repeated words - as in your example.

[nelson13]

O I see.... Thank you.

I thought it wrong because a native speaker of English told me it was unnatural and therefore was wrong.

[susan53]

It might sound unnatural - it would depend on the context. Always provide a full context when you ask a question as it makes it much easier to answer - language use is always context dependent. You'll notice i had to invent one to discuss it. Certainly, as I said, other forms are more frequent, for the reasons I gave. Your sentence breaks the general rule and therefore might sound odd in some contexts - but that doesn't mean it couldn't be used in others.

[nelson13]

Thank you.

List of Nobel laureates in Literature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The citation this year is

"[He] who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary".[4]

Is ellipsis used?

[susan53]

No. It's an adjectival noun - just as you might talk about "the English" or "the rich", meaning "English/Rich people"