Syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices реферат
Обновлено: 03.07.2024
Stylistic value of syntax is not confined only to the length and structure of the sentence, however. Stylistic system of language operates a great number of specially elaborated media – syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices. Syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices are such sentence models, which impart to the sentence additional logical or emotional information and enlarge its stylistic and pragmatic potential. According to the type of the basic syntactic model transformation all syntactic stylistic devices can be subdivided into the following groups:
1. syntactic stylistic devices based on the reduction of sentence model;
2. syntactic stylistic devices based on the extension of sentence model;
3. syntactic stylistic devices based on the change of word order;
4. syntactic stylistic devices based on special types of formal and semantic correlation of syntactic constructions within a text;
5. syntactic stylistic devices based on the transposition of sentence meaning;
All syntactic models that belong to the above mentioned groups are considered stylistically marked and are opposed to the neutral syntactic model – a simple declarative sentence (просте розповідне речення), such as The door opened, I want to meet him, Irene made no reply, etc.
Syntactic stylistic devices based on the reduction of sentence model
Ellipsis
Ellipsis is an intentional omission of the subject, predicate or both principal parts of a sentence in cases when they are semantically redundant. The meaning of the omitted member can be easily restored from the context.
Elliptical sentences cannot be viewed as stylistic device in direct intercourse, in official or scientific oral discourses because in this sphere of communication they are devoid of any additional pragmatic value. In oral speech the phenomenon of ellipsis is rather norm than a special stylistic device. A speaker uses elliptical sentences in order to save needless efforts, to spare time and language means.
Elliptical sentences acquire expressiveness when they are used in emotive prose (or sometimes in poetry) as a means of imitating real colloquial speech, live talk or as a means of exposing character’s emotions:
Augustus. Hullo! Who are you?
The clerk. The stuff.
Augustus. You the stuff! What do you mean, man? Where are the others?
The clerk. At the front (B.Show).
It would be a good idea to bring along one of the Doc’s new capsules. Could have gone into a drug store and asked for a glass of water and take one (D. Carter).
Ниє-омліває материне серце. А тут уже й ніч наступає, непроглядна темнота надходить. Марина ні жива ні мертва. Коли чує – щось лізе в хату, ледве лізе.
- Де ж це ти була так довго? Де барилася?
- Світіть, мамо, світло. Благодать Божа!
- Яка благодать? (Панас Мирний).
Nominative sentences
Nominative (or nominal) sentence is a one-member sentence, which kernel component is expressed by a noun or noun-like element (gerund, numeral). The surface structures of nominative sentences in English and Ukrainian are common – the structural form of nominative sentences can be either extended or expanded. The former consists of two or more nominal components connected both syndetically and asyndetically. Expanded nominal sentence consists of two or more nominal components connected by means of co-ordinate conjunctions:
An aching business (J. Galsworthy).
The gloomy dockside and the grey river; the bustle with baggage, and the crowded tender (J. Galsworthy).
Високий ранок, камінь не нагрітий.
Сочистий кущ і поруч синя тінь.
Вузьке від спеки річкове корито.
Уламки скель. Акварилева рінь (Є Маланюк).
The structural and semantic diversity of nominative sentences as well as their position and distribution within a certain context impart rather significant stylistic value to them. A sequence of nominative sentences makes for the dynamic description of the events, depiction of the time of the action, the place, the attendant circumstances, its participants, etc. Or on the contrary, the dissemination of nominative sentences into the context breaks the even flow of narration, highlights the very minute changes in the depicted situation, character’s mood, thoughts, recollections and emotions. A nominative sentence in final position sums up (logically or emotionally) the information of the passage. A single nominal sentence in the initial position introduces the topic of the passage, catches reader’s attention, recalls certain ideas and makes them vivid, shape and specifies the thing, event, phenomenon:
He, and the falling light and dying fire, the time-worn room, the solitude, the wasted life, and gloom, were all in fellowship. Ashes, and dust, and ruins (Ch. Dickens).
Батько. ниюча рана. І характер, і мова, і чорний чуб у нього від батька, або, точніше, без батька. У тридцять сьомім чорний ворон забрав батька і повів сибірськими етапами. І нічого-нічого, тільки – син “ворога народу”.
Specific stylistic function is attributed to other structural and semantic types of one-member sentences: imperative, exclamatory, infinitival, vocative and one-word (or quasi) sentences. They are frequently resorted to in poetry and emotive prose as an efficient means of colloquial pastiche (стилізації під розмовне мовлення):
Stylistic devices making use of the meaning and structure of language units. Phonetic expressive means and devices. Characteristics types of metaphors. Climax – lexical or syntactic repetition. Chiasm - a reversed version of syntactic parallelism.
| Рубрика | Иностранные языки и языкознание |
| Вид | презентация |
| Язык | английский |
| Дата добавления | 20.12.2013 |
| Размер файла | 90,2 K |
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Название работы: Expressive means and stylistics devices
Предметная область: Иностранные языки, филология и лингвистика
Описание: All stylistic means of a language can be divided into expressive means which are used in some specific way and special devices called stylistic devices. The expressive means of a language are those phonetic means morphological forms means of wordbuilding and lexical phraseological and syntactical forms all of which function in the language for emotional or logical intensification of the utterance. These intensifying forms of the language have been fixed in grammars and dictionaries. The most powerful expressive means of any language.
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Основы теории изучаемого языка Стилистика английского языка
Expressive means and stylistic devices
Expressive means and stylistics devices
In linguistics there are different terms to denote those particular means by which a writer obtains his effect. Expressive means, stylistic means, stylistic devices and other terms are all used indiscriminately For our purposes it is necessary to make a distinction between expressive means and stylistic devices. All stylistic means of a language can be divided into expressive means, which are used in some specific way, and special devices called stylistic devices. The expressive means of a language are those phonetic means, morphological forms, means of word-building, and lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms, all of which function in the language for emotional or logical intensification of the utterance. These intensifying forms of the language have been fixed in grammars and dictionaries. Some of them are normalized, and good dictionaries label them as intensifiers. In most cases they have corresponding neutral synonymous forms.
The most powerful expressive means of any language are phonetic. Pitch, melody, stress, pausation, drawling, drawling out certain syllables, whispering, a sing-song manner of speech and other ways of using the voice are more effective than any other means in intensifying the utterance emotionally or logically. Among the morphological expressive means the use of the Present indefinite instead of the Past Indefinite must be mentioned first. This has already been acknowledged as a special means and is named the Historical Present. In describing some past events the author uses the present tense, thus achieving a more vivid picturisation of what was going on.
The use of "shall" in the second and third person may also be regarded as an expressive means. Compare the following synonymous forms and you will not fail to observe the intensifying element in the sentence with "shall".
He shall do it = (I shall make him do it)
He has to do it = (It is necessary for him to do it)
Among word - building means we find a great many forms which serve to make the utterance more expressive and fresh or to intensify it. The diminutive suffixes as - у (ie), - let, e. g. dear, dearie, stream, streamlet, add some emotional colouring to the words.
Certain affixes have gained such a power of expressiveness that they begin functioning as separate words, absorbing all of generalizing meaning they usually attach to different roots, as for example: -ism and ologies.
At the lexical level there are a great many words which due to their inner expressiveness, constitute a special layer There are words with emotive meaning only,
like interjections, words which have both referential and emotive meaning, like some of the qualitative adjectives, words belonging to special groups of Literary English or of non - standard English (poetic, archaic, slang, vulgar, etc.) and some other groups.
-The same can be said of the set expressions of the language. Proverbs and sayings as well as catch - words for a considerable number of language units which serve to make speech more emphatic, mainly from the emotional point of view. Their use in everyday speech can hardly be overestimated. Some of these proverbs and sayings are so well - known that their use in the process of communication passes almost unobserved.
The expressive means of the language are studied respectively in manuals of phonetics, grammar, lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics, however, observes not only the nature of an expressive means, but also its potential capacity of becoming a stylistic device.
What then is a stylistic device? It is a conscious and intentional literary use of some of the facts of the language including EM in which the most essential features both structural and semantic of the language forms are raised to a generalized level and thereby present a generative model. Most stylistic devices may be regarded as aiming at the further intensification in the corresponding EM.
This conscious transformation of a language fact into a stylistic devise has been observed by certain linguists whose interests in scientific research have gone beyond the boundaries of grammar.
The birth of a SD is not accidental. Language means which are used with more or less definite aims of communication and in one and the same function in various passage of writing, begin gradually to develop new features, a wider range of functions and become a relative means of the language. It would perhaps be more correct to say that/unlike expressive means, stylistic devices are patterns of the language whereas the expressive means do not form patterns. They are just like words themselves, they are facts of the language, and as such are, or should be, registered in dictionaries.
The interrelation between expressive means and stylistic devices can be worded in terms of the theory of information. Expressive means have a greater degree of predictability than stylistic devices. The latter may appear in an environment which may seem alien and therefore be only slightly or not at all predictable. Expressive means are commonly used in language, and are therefore easily predictable. Stylistic devices carry a greater amount of information because if they are at all predictable they are less predictable than expressive means. It follows that stylistic devices must be regarded as a special code which has still to be deciphered.
Not every stylistic use of a language fact will come under the term SD. There are practically unlimited possibilities of presenting any language fact in what is vaguely called it's stylistic use.
General notes on functional styles of language
A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. A functional style is thus to be regarded as the product of a certain concrete task set by the sender of the message. Functional styles appear mainly in the literary standard of a language.
The literary standard of the English language, like that of any other developed language, is not so homogeneous as it may seem. In fact the standard English literary language in the course of its development has fallen into several subsystems each of which has acquired its own peculiarities which are typical of the given functional style. The members of the language community, especially those who are sufficiently trained and responsive to language variations, recognize these styles as independent wholes. The peculiar choice of language means is primarily predetermined by the aim of the communication with the result that a more or less closed system is built up. One set of language media stands in opposition to other sets .of language media with other aims, and these other sets have other choices and arrangements of language means.
What we here call functional styles are also called registers or d i s с о u r s e s.
In the English literary standard we distinguish the following major functional styles (hence FS):
1) The language of belles-lettres.
2) The language of publicistic literature.
3) The language of newspapers.
4) The language of scientific prose.
5) The language of official documents.
As has already been mentioned, functional styles are the product of the development of the written variety of language. l Each FS may be characterized by a number of distinctive features, leading or subordinate, constant or changing, obligatory or optional. Most of the FSs, however, are perceived as independent wholes due to a peculiar combination and interrelation of features common to all (especially when taking into account syntactical arrangement) with the leading ones of each FS.
Each FS is subdivided into a number of substyles. These represent varieties of the abstract invariant. Each variety has basic features common to all the varieties of the given FS and peculiar features typical of this variety alone. Still a substyle can, in some cases, deviate so far from the invariant that in its extreme it may even break away.
We clearly perceive the following substyles of the five FSs given above.
The belles-letters FS has the following substyles: a) style of poetry, b) of emotive prose, c) of drama
The publicistic F S comprises the following substyles: a) the language style of oratory; b) the language style of essays;
c) the language style of feature articles in newspapers and journals.*
The newspaper FS falls into a) the language style of brief news items and communications; b) the language style of newspaper headings and c) the language style of notices and advertisements.
The scientific prose FS also has three divisions: a) the language style of humanitarian sciences; b) the language style of "exact" sciences; c) the language style of popular scientific prose.
The official document FS can be divided into four varieties: a) the language style of diplomatic documents; b) the language style of business documents; c) the language style of legal .documents; d) the language style of military documents.
The classification presented here is by no means arbitrary. It is the result of long and minute observations of factual material in which not only peculiarities of language usage were taken into account but also extralinguistic data, in particular the purport of the communication. However, we admit that this classification is not proof against criticism. Other schemes may possibly be elaborated and highlighted by different approaches to the problem of functional styles. The classification of FSs is not a simple matter and any discussion of it is bound to reflect more than one angle of vision. Thus, for example, some stylicists consider that newspaper articles (including feature articles) should be classed under the functional style of newspaper language, not under the language of publicistic literature. Others insist on including the language of every- ' day-life discourse into the system of functional styles. Prof. Budagov singles out only two main functional styles: the language of science and that of emotive literature.
The development of the English language
The Germanic tribes, Jutes (юты), Saxons ( саксы ) and the Angles ( англы ), came to England around the 5 th century AD and began to live in the Jutland, Holstein ( Гольштейн ) and Schleswig ( Шлезгвиг ) areas. Later the Jutes settled in Kent and the southern Hampshire ( Гэмпшир ), the Saxons in the rest of the south of the Thames and the modern Middlesex, and the Angles spread throughout the rest of England and as far as up to the Scottish lowlands. In Germanic, Angles were called the Angli, and that was transformed to Engle in Old English, and thus the land of all three tribes was collectively called (Engle+land) England. The Jutes, Saxons and Angles held their dialects separately. Later two separate Anglian dialects developed. The dialect of the North of Humber river was called Northumbrian ( нортумбрский ) and of the south was called the Mercian ( мерсийский ). Also the Saxons dialect was called West saxon as they were settled in the west, and the dialect of Jutes was called the Kentish who were on the southern and eastern sides of the river Thames. Thus there were four main dialects in England.
In the beginning, the Northumbrians held prominence in literature and culture, but after the Viking invasions (793-865) the cultural leadership went to the West Saxon group. In the later part of 9 th century the Parker Chronicle (or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) was written, and thus, West Saxons dialect became the “Standard Old English”. According to the literary development of the English language, it could be classified as: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English and Modern English.
Old English (9 th and 10 th centuries)
The English language uses the Latin alphabet of 26 consonants and vowels. In the beginning there were very few words of general use like, words of kinship: faedor, modor, brothor, sweostor ; 25 names with their inflections like mon, men and some adjectives and verbs. There were two demonstratives: se, seo (that) and thes (this), but there were no articles. So the good man was written as se (that) goda mon, and a good man was an (one) goda mon. Verbs had only two tenses: present-future and past with inflections. There were three genders. The word order in a sentence was not of much importance in those days as long as the theme was understood. But Old English is totally incomprehensible for modern English knower. It was more like the modern German of today. For example: Hie ne dorston forth bi th ere ea siglan (they dared not sail beyond that river).
Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the English language in use between the late 11th century and about 1470, when a form of London-based English began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the late 1470s. A great role in literary English played Chancery Standard which was a written form of English used by government bureaucracy and for other official purposes from the late 15th century. It is believed to have contributed in a significant way to the development of the English language as spoken and written today. Because of the differing dialects of English spoken and written across the country at the time, the government needed a clear and unambiguous form for use in its official documents. Chancery Standard was developed to meet this need.
Although it is possible to overestimate the degree of culture shock which the transfer of power in 1066 represented, the removal from the top levels of society of an English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their replacement with one speaking Norman French and using Latin for administrative purposes, opened the way for the introduction of Norman French as a language of polite discourse and literature, and fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration. This period of tri-lingual activity developed much of the flexible triplicate synonymy of modern English.
Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th century) to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English. Prior to and following the accession of James I to the English throne the emerging English standard began to influence the spoken and written Middle Scots of Scotland.
Current readers of English are generally able to understand Early Modern English, though occasionally with difficulties arising from grammar changes, changes in the meanings of some words, and spelling differences. The standardization of English spelling falls within the Early Modern English period and is influenced by conventions predating the Great Vowel Shift, explaining much of the non-phonetic spelling of contemporary Modern English.
Modern English (1660 onward)
Until the eighteenth century the uniformity was the result of social pressure rather than of educational theory. Early English grammars ( the first appeared in 1586 ) had been written either to help foreigners learn English or to prepare English students for study of Latin grammar. On the whole these books neither had nor were intended to have any influence on the use of English by native speakers. It was not until about 1750 that there was any general attempt to teach Englishmen systematically how to use their own language.
The grammarians of the 18 th century like Ribert lowth and James Buchanan took a critical view and spent a lot of time in correcting the shortcomings and the impurities of the English language that were commonly in use. For example a third alternative, more perfect, you was the term was frequently used among educated people.
During that time Lindley Murray published his Grammar in 1795 followed by English Reader in1799 and English Spelling Book in 1804.
The vocabulary of English language is a mixture of Germanic, greek, Latin and French words. There are a number of dialects and subdialects in United Kingdom. For instance, Southeast England, Northern, Midland, Norfolk, South Western, Wales and Lowland Scottish.
1) The juxtaposition of the parts of an utterance;
2) The type of connection of the parts;
3) The peculiar use of colloquial constructions;
4) The transference of structural meaning.
a) Inversion (several types). Word-order is a crucial syntactical problem in many languages. The English affirmative sentence is regarded as neutral if it maintains the regular word-order, i.e. subject-predicate-object. If this order is changed, it is inversion. Stylistic inversion aims at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the utterance.
The following patterns of stylistic inversion are most frequently met in both English prose and poetry:
1) The object is placed at the beginning of the sentence:
2) The attribute is placed after the word it modifies (postposition of the attribute). This model is often used when there is more than one attribute.
Example 2: ‘with fingers, weary and worn…’
3) The predicative stands before the link-verb and both are placed before the subject.
Example 3: ‘Rude am I in my speech…’
4) The adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence.
Example 4: “My dearest daughter, at your feet I fall’.
5) Both modifier and predicate stand before the subject.
Example 5: ‘In wentMr Pickwick’
b) Detached construction
Detachment is a kind of inversion. Its essence lies in the separation of a secondary part of the sentence with the aim of emphasizing it. The separation is accompanied by violation of customary syntactical connections and leads to a certain logical break between the member detached and the main parts of the sentence. The aim of Detachment is the same as of Inversion – to make some words or phrases more prominent. In the text Detachment is usually marked by commas, dashes, brackets.
In fact any secondary member of the sentence may be detached:
Example 6: He never looked more than 14. Very small and child-like.
Example 7: He saved my life, brave boy.
3) adverbial modifier of reason:
Example 8: I shall not see her, being so hurt.
4) adverbial modifier of manner:
Example 9: He entered the room, pipe in mouth.
5) adverbial modifier of time:
Example 10: She was crazy about her. In the beginning.
6) direct object:
Example 11: He was very talented, capital he had not.
7) prepositional object:
Example 12: It was, to Forsyte’s eye, a strange house.
c) Parenthesis is a variant of detachment. It is a qualifying or appositive word or word-combination which interrupts a syntactical construction and introduces some additional information. Its function is to emphasize something or explain and specify an utterance. It may create the background to the events, reveal the inner state of the personage, show the author’s attitude to the events described, strengthen some facts and bare evaluative meaning.
Example 13: ‘The main entrance (she never ventured to look beyond that) was a combination of glass and iron’.
d) Parallel construction is a device in which the necessary condition is identical, or similar, syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence in close succession. Parallelism is usually observed in macro-images (paragraphs). There may be
a) complete parallelism – typical of poetry. The structures here have the same syntactical pattern.
Example 14:
‘The warm sun is failing
The bleak wind is wailing
The bare bushes are sighing
The pale flowers are dying’.
b) Partial parallelism, i.e. structural similarity of some parts of successive units.
Example 15:
‘The wind blew faster
It dragged now at his coat,
It blew its space about him
It echoedsilently a lonely spaciousness.’
e) Chiasmus is based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern, but it has a cross order of words and phrases. The structure of two successive sentences or parts of a sentence may be described as reversed parallel construction, e.g. in the 1 st sentence we have a+b and in the 2 nd – b+a.
Example 16: ‘As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection (depression, dismay) do we sink as low’ (Wordsworth).
Example 17: ‘But Tom’s no more. And so no more of Tom’
Example 18: ‘Pleasure is a sin. And sometimes sin a pleasure.’
The author emphasizes the 2 nd part of the utterance. There is a pause after the 1 st part of the utterance and then an unexpected change of word-order.
Chiasmusis often used for epigrams and paradoxes; it may have a humorous effect.
Example 19: ‘When we are happy we are always happy, but when we are good we’re not always happy’.
f) Repetition (reiteration) is the use of the same word or word-combination for two or more times. According to the place which the repeated unit occupies in a sentence repetition is classified into several types:
1) Anaphora. The beginning of the successive sentences or utterances is repeated.
Example 20: ‘Once again he fingered the letter in his pocket, once again he read the letter.’
2) Epiphora. The end of the successive sentences or utterances is repeated. Example 21: ‘I wake up and I’m alone. I talk with people and I’m alone.’
3) Framing. The beginning of the sentence is repeated in the end of the successive syntactical unit. The function of framing is to stress the notion mentioned in the beginning of the sentence. Between the 2 appearances of the repeated unit there comes a developing middle part which explains the idea introduced in the beginning.
Example 22: ‘Nothing ever happened in that little town left behind the civilization, nothing.’
4) Anadiplosis (catch repetition). The final word or words of the preceding sentence are repeated at the beginning of the next one. The emotional emphasis of the anadiplosis is very strong.
Example 23: ‘There was room, room to breathe.’
5) Chain repetition. It presents several successive anadiploses. The effect of it may be that of smoothly developing logical reasoning or emphasizing the emotional colouring.
Example 24: ‘The cook looked at the maid, the maid looked at the footman, the footman looked at the coachman, the coachman at the master.’
6) Synonymical repetition is the expression of the same idea by various synonyms which differ in their nominative meaning, in the degree of the expressed quality or idea and differ in connotative meaning. Example 25:
‘The poetry of earth is never dead.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never.
7) Morphological repetition. It’s the repetition of the same morpheme.
Example 26: ‘It was waving and laughing, sobbing and growing, and ever and again it shouted.’
8) Tautological repetition and pleonasm.
Tautology is the repetition of the same statement; the repetition of the same word or phrase, or of the same idea or statement in other words. Pleonasm is defined as the use of more words in a sentence than are necessary to express the meaning.
Example 27: ‘It was a clear starry night, and not a cloud was to be seen.’
Tautology and pleonasm are considered to be a defect of style.
g) Enumeration is a stylistic device by which separate things, objects, phenomena, properties, actions are named one by one so that they produce a chain, the links of which, being syntactically in the same position (homogeneous parts of speech) are forced to display some kind of semantic unity.
Example 28:
‘There Harold gazes on a work divine,
A blending (mixture, harmony) of all beauties; streams and dells,
Fruit, foliage, crag (rock), cornfield, mountain, vine …’ (Byron).
Enumeration is aimed to produce humorous effect and to reflect the personal attitude.
h) Suspense (retardation) is a deliberate delay in the completion of the expressed thought. What has been delayed is the loading task of the utterance and the reader awaits the completion of the utterance with an ever increasing tension. Suspense is achieved by a repeated occurrence of phrases or clauses expressing condition, supposition, time, and the like, all of which hold back the conclusion of the utterance.
i) Climax (gradation); anticlimax is based on the recurrence of a certain syntactic pattern. In each recurrent sequence the lexical unit is either emotionally stronger or logically more important. Climax aims at imparting logical, emotional and quantitative colouring to the utterance.
By logical coloring we mean that every successive concept is logically more important than the previous one.
Example 29: ‘He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, if he likes – death, the unseen death is coming’.
With the use of synonyms with different emotive coloring authors usually achieve the increase in the emotional tension of the utterance.
Example 30:
– Grand view, isn’t it? – said Harris. ‘Magnificent! I agreed. ‘Superb! – remarked George’.
Quantitative coloring implies an increase in the volume, size and number of each succeeding concept.
Example 31:‘They looked at hundreds of houses, they climbed thousands of stairs, inspected innumerable kitchens’.
j) Anticlimax (bathos) is the reverse of climax. There are 2 types of anticlimax:
1) Each previous unit expressing a weaker quality so that emotion gradually decreases;
2) Emotion and logical importance gradually arises, but unexpectedly breaks and falls which produces humorous or ironic effect.
Example 32: ‘She felt that she did not really know these people, that she would never know them; she wanted to go on seeing them, being with them and living in their workaday world. But she did not do this’. (A. Coppard)
k) Antithesis is a phrase, a sentence or a group in which a thing (or a concept) is measured against, or contrasted to its opposite.
Example 33: ‘Life is much flattered. Death is much traduced.
Antithesis emerges as a result of a contraposition of two or more words, the words being either antonyms or contrastive in some of their meanings.
2. Particular ways of combining Parts of the Utterance (types of connection)
a) Polysyndeton is an insistent repetition of a connective between words, phrases or clauses in an utterance.
Example 34: ‘They were all 3 from Milan and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier, and after we were finished with the machines, sometimes we walked back together to the Cafe Cova.’ (Hemingway).
b) Asyndeton on the contrary is a deliberate avoidance of connectives.
Example 35: ‘Soames turned away; he had an utter disinclination for talk, like one standing before an open grave, watching a coffin slowly lowered.’
c) The ‘Gap-Sentence’ Link is a way of connecting two sentences seemingly unconnected and leaving it to the reader to grasp the idea implied, but not worded. In the gap-sentence-link the connection of sentences is not immediately apparent and it requires a certain mental effort to grasp the interrelation between the parts of the utterance, in other words, ‘to bridge’ the semantic gap.
Example 36: ‘She and that fellow ought to be the sufferers, and they were in Italy’. (Galsworthy).
In this sentence the 2 nd part, which is hooked on to the 1 st by the conjunction ‘and’, seems to be unmotivated or, the whole sentence seems to be logically incoherent. The gap-sentence-linkis generally indicated by ‘and’ or ‘but’.
The gap-sentence-link has various functions. It may serve to signal the introduction of inner represented speech; it may be used to indicate the subjective evaluation of the facts, etc. On the whole it aims at stirring up in the reader’s mind the suppositions, associations and conditions under which the sentence uttered can really exist.
3. Peculiar Use of Colloquial Constructions
a) Ellipsis is a deliberate omission of one or more words for some stylistic purposes. In elliptic constructions the subject or the predicate may be omitted or both. Ellipsis is a typical feature of speech used for the sake of economy of language means and articulatory efforts. Ellipsis always imitates the common features of colloquial language and helps the author render the atmosphere of lively informal conversation, emotional condition of his personages (shock, astonishment, surprise).
Example 37: ‘Been home?’ instead of ‘Have you been home?’
Elliptic sentences may also be in the author’s narration to represent the inner speech of the personage, especially when he is in a difficult situation.
b) Break-in-the-narrative (aposiopesis)
In the spoken variety of the language a break-in-the-narrative is usually caused by unwillingness to proceed; or by the supposition that what remains to be said can be understood by the implication; or by uncertainty as to what should be said.
In the written variety a break in the narrative is always a stylistic device used for some stylistic effect.
In the sentence: ‘You just come home or I’ll …’ the implication is a threat, which without the context can only be vague. But when one knows that the words were said by an angry father to his son over the telephone the implication becomes apparent.
Break-in-the-narrative has a strong degree of predictability because of the structure of the sentence. It is used in complex sentences, especially in conditional sentences, the if-clause being given in full and the second part only implied.
c) Question -in-the-narrative
Questions in spoken language presuppose two interlocutors: the questioner is presumed not to know the answer.
A question in-the-narrative as a stylistic device is asked and answered by one person, usually the author. Example 38:
‘And starting, she awoke, and what to view?
Oh, Powers of Heaven. What dark eye meets she there?
‘Tis – ‘tis her father’s – fixed upon the pair.’ (Byron).
Question in-the-narrative may also remain unanswered.
d) Represented speech (несобственная речь).
There are 3 ways of reproducing actual speech:
1) direct speech (repetition of the exact utterance as it was spoken; it is characterized by the use of exclamatory and interrogative forms of sentences, elliptical sentences, emotional words, interjections, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ words);
2) indirect speech (rendering of the exact utterance by the 2 nd person: here passing through the mouth of the 2 nd person it often changes the emotional colouring; besides sometimes only the main points of the utterance are given. The rules of the sequence of tenses are observed here.);
3) represented speech which combines the features of direct and indirect speech. It is that form of utterance which conveys the actual words of the speaker through the mouth of the author but retains the peculiarities of the speaker’s mode of expression.
Represented speech exists in 2 varieties:
1) uttered represented speech and 2) unuttered represented speech.
1) Uttered represented speech demands that the tense should be changed from present to past and that the personal pronouns should be changed from 1 st and 2 nd to 3 rd person as in indirect speech, but the syntactical structure of the utterance does not change.
Example 39: ‘Could he bring a reference from where he was now? He could’. (Dreiser).
2) Unuttered or inner represented speech is the process of materializing one’s thoughts by means of language units. Now that inner speech has no communicative function it is very fragmentary, incoherent (disjoint), isolated and consists of separate units.
Inner represented speech unlike uttered represented speech expressed feelings and thoughts of the character which were not materialized in spoken or written language. That is why it abounds in exclamatory words and phrases elliptical constructions, breaks, etc.
In Inner represented speech also the tense forms are shifted to the past, the 3 rd person pronouns replace the 1 st and 2 nd ; the interrogative word order is maintained but there appear unfinished sentences, exclamations and one-member sentences.
Example 40: ‘Oh, love, love! Edward! Edward! Oh! He would not, could not remain away. She must see him – give him a chance to explain.’ (Ch. Bronte).
IV. Transferred Use of Structural Meaning.
Rhetorical Question is a special syntactical stylistic device which transforms a question into a statement expressed in a form of a question.
There are 2 types of rhetorical questions:
1) a rhetorical question with a negative predicate. The implication of such a negative question is a statement with an additional shade of meaning of doubt or assertion, or suggestion.
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