Only when thesetwo principles reach one kind of balance, can effort be really saved. (Zipf, 1949: 21-22) Inconclusion, the language economy principle is to use the minimal costs to gain maximalbenefits. On the basis of the Zipf’s research, a French linguist, Martinet (1963) did furtherstudies on various applications of economical principle in phonology and syntax, andclaimed that there are conflicts between people’s actual need of communication and inbornlaziness. His view is in accordance with Zipf’s but with different dictions. The cooperativeprinciple put forward by Grice (1967) involves the “the maxim of quantity” which means“words should not contain more than the information needed”. Later, another scholarnamed Leech, presented his opinion that economy principle is to “be quick and easy” fromthe perspective of pragmatics. (Leech, 1983: 124) Both Kasher (1985) and Coulmas (1992)insisted that the economical principle is the more general principle governing people’scommunicative activities. So, many foreign academicians have done great contributions toenrich this theory. Many of them laid much stress on the explanation of this principle, butdid few researches from the perspective of second language acquisition.There are also many renowned domestic scholars, such as Chen Xinren, Guo Xiumei,Xiang Mingyou and so on, airing their views on this theory. From the angle of rhetoric,源]自[优尔^`论\文"网·www.youerw.com/
Guo Xiumei argues that “economy means that it never needs to use a second word if oneword is enough”. (Guo Xiumei, 1985: 16) Chen Xinren pointed out that language economyinvolves “logic contraction”, “grammatical ellipsis” and “voice omissions”. (Chen Xinren,1994: 8) Xiang Mingyou deemed that the language economic principle is realized throughoptimizing configuration to achieve the maximization of utility. (Xiang Mingyou, 2002:310) Through analyzing some Chinese sentences without verbs, Deng Siying (2002)concluded that Chinese obeys the principle of structural economy. Jiang Wangqisummarized the principle as “using minimum costs for the biggest benefits”. (JiangWangqi, 2005: 87) Pan Hong (2012) investigated the applications and motives of this principle in present-day English at the linguistic level. Based on discussing the realmeaning of language economy, Zhang Qiankun redefined the principle as “optimalprinciple”. (Zhang Qiankun, 2013: 218) These views provide sufficient theoretical basesfor the study of this topic. However, similar to foreign scholars mentioned above, theydidn’t do further studies on how this principle influences people’s daily life and study.From the literature review above, it is evident that there are many great successesthat have already been achieved in this field, and several scholars, such as Martinet, ChenXinren, and Pan Hong, have done some researches on the applications of languageeconomy from the perspective of English phonetics. Nevertheless, there are few studies onhow this principle affects second language learners at the phonetic level. Therefore, basedon introducing the elliptical rules obeyed in English phonetics, this thesis will also analyzethe effects of these rules and put forward some solutions to their adverse impacts.