Meta Model ‘Deletions’: Simple Deletions, Unspecified Nouns, and Comparative Deletions

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

A quick clear-up of the remaining Meta Model patterns – find the others here.

Simple Deletions

We can identify a statement as having one or more ‘simple deletions’ if information that you need is left out altogether. If someone says “I’m more upset than I’ve ever been!” you would want to ask the question “About what?”

You would only want to ask the question if you need the missing information. Many things that that we say have some simple deletions, and sometimes it’s not important to know what that information is.

Unspecified Nouns (‘Unspecified Referential Index‘ in the NLP jargon)

This is where it’s not clear which people or what things the speaker is talking about. “It’s going well” – what is?

“Certain people aren’t pulling their weight” – which people? Who specifically? Again, you would only ask the question if you need to know the answer.

Comparative Deletions

With this final pattern, there is a comparison being made, but the speaker is not saying what the comparison is with. People say things like this all the time:

“This is a better model”. Better than what? And, come to that, better in what way?

“That’s a lot of money.” Compared to what?

So your question, if you need to ask one, will aim to recover information about the missing other side of the comparison.

© 2024 – 2026, Andy Smith. All rights reserved.