Assignments for Self-Control

1. What is a rhetorical question?

2. What types of repetition do you know?

3. Comment on the functions of repetition which you
observed in your reading.

4. Which type of repetition have you met most often?
What, in your opinion, makes it so popular?

5. What constructions are called parallel?

6. Have you ever observed chiasmus? What is it?

Inversion which was briefly mentioned in the definition of

chiasmus is very often used as an independent SD in which
the direct word order is changed either completely so that
the predicate (predicative) precedes the subject, or partially
so that the object precedes the subject-predicate pair. Cor-
respondingly, we differentiate between a partial and a complete
inversion.

The stylistic device of inversion should not be confused with grammatical inversion which is a norm in interrogative constructions. Stylistic inversion deals with the rearrangement of the normative word order. Questions may also be rearranged: "Your mother is at home?" asks one of the characters of J. Baldwin's novel. The inverted question presupposes the answer with more certainty than the normative one. It is the assuredness of the speaker of the positive answer that con-stitutes additional information which is brought into the question by the inverted word order. Interrogative constructions with the direct word order may be viewed as cases of two-step (double) inversion: direct w / о - grammatical inversion -direct w / o.

Still another SD dealing with the arrangement of members of the sentence is suspense - a deliberate postponement of the completion of the sentence. The term "suspense" is also used in literary criticism to denote an expectant uncertainty about the outcome of the plot. To hold the reader in suspense means to keep the final solution just out of sight. Detective and adventure stories are examples of suspense fiction. The theme, that which is known, and the rheme, that which is new, of the sentence are distanced from each other and the new information is withheld, creating the tension of expecta-tion. Technically, suspense is organized with the help of embedded clauses (homogeneous members) separating the predicate from the subject and introducing less important facts and details first, while the expected information of major importance is reserved till the end of the sentence (utterance).

A specific arrangement of sentence members is observed in detachment, a stylistic device based on singling out a secondary member of the sentence with the help of punc-tuation (intonation). The word-order here is not violated, but secondary members obtain their own stress and intonation

because they are detached from the rest of the sentence by commas, dashes or even a full stop as in the following cases: "He had been nearly killed, ingloriously, in a jeep accident." (I. Sh.) "I have to beg you for money. Daily." (S. L.) Both "ingloriously" and "daily" remain adverbial modi-fiers, occupy their proper normative places, following the modified verbs, but-due to detachment and the ensuing additional pause and stress - are foregrounded into the focus of the reader's attention.

Exercise III. Find and analyse cases of detachment, suspense and inversion. Comment on the structure and functions of each:

1. She narrowed her eyes a trifle at me and said I looked
exactly like Celia Briganza's boy. Around the mouth. (S.)

2. He observes it all with a keen quick glance, not
unkindly, and full rather of amusement than of censure.
(V. W.)

3. She was crazy about you. In the beginning. (R. W.)

4. How many pictures of new journeys over pleasant
country, of resting places under the free broad sky, of
rambles in the fields and woods, and paths not often
trodden - how many tones of that one well-remembered voice, how many glimpses of the form, the fluttering dress, the hair that waved so gaily in the wind - how many visions of what had been and what he hoped was yet to be – rose up before him in the old, dull, silent church! (D.)

5. It was not the monotonous days uncheckered by variety
and uncheered by pleasant companionship, it was not the
dark dreary evenings or the long solitary nights, it was not
the absence of every slight and easy pleasure for which young
hearts beat high or the knowing nothing of childhood but
its weakness and its easily wounded spirit, that had wrung
such tears from Nell. (D.)

6. Of all my old association, of all my old pursuits and
hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor
soul alone comes natural to me. (D.)

7. Corruption could not spread with so much success,
though reduced into a system, and though some ministers,
with equal impudence and folly, avowed it by themselves
and their advocates, to be the principal expedient by which
they governed; if a long and almost unobserved progression
of causes and effects did not prepare the conjuncture. (Bol.)

8. I have been accused of bad taste. This has disturbed
me not so much for my own sake (since I am used to

the slights and arrows of outrageous fortune) as for the sake . of criticism in general. (S. M.)

9. On, on he wandered, night and day, beneath the
blazing sun, and the cold pale moon; through the dry heat
of noon, and the damp cold of night; in the grey light
of morn, and the red glare of eve. (D.)

10. Benny Collan, a respected guy, Benny Collan wants
to marry her. An agent could ask for more? (Т. C.)

11. Women are not made for attack. Wait they must.
(J. C.)

12. Out came the chase-in went the horses - on sprang
the boys - in got the travellers. (D.)

13. Then he said: "You think it's so? She was mixed
up in this lousy business? (J. B.)

14. And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an
enlargement of all the hamlets which they had been passing.
Only to the eyes of a Kennicot was it exceptional. (S. L.)

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1197