ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. Comment on the length of the sentence and its stylistic relevance.

2. What do you know about one-word sentences?

3. Is there any correlation between the length and the structure of the sentence?

4. Can syntactical ambivalence be put to stylistic use?

5. What punctuation marks do you know and what is their stylistic potential?

Punctuation also specifies the communicative type of the sentence. So, as you well know, a point of interrogation marks a question and a full stop signals a statement. There are cases though when a statement is crowned with a question mark. Often this punctuation-change is combined with the change of word-order, the latter following the pattern of question. This peculiar interrogative construction which semantically remains a statement is called a rhetorical question. Unlike an ordinary question, the rhetorical question does not demand any information but serves to express the emotions of the speaker and also to call the attention of listeners. Rhetorical questions make an indispensable part of oratoric speech for they very successfully emphasize the orator's ideas. In fact the speaker knows the answer himself and gives it immediately after the question is asked. The interrogative intonation and / or punctuation draw the attention of listeners (readers) to the focus of the utterance. Rhetorical questions are also often asked in "unanswerable" cases, as when in distress or anger we resort to phrases like "What have I done to deserve..." or "What shall I do when...". The artificiality of question-form of such constructions is further stressed by exclamation marks which, alongside points of interrogation, end rhetorical questions.

The effect of the majority of syntactical stylistic devices depends on either the completeness of the structure or on the arrangement of its members. The order in which words (clauses) follow each other is of extreme importance not only for the logical coherence of the sentence but also for its connotational meanings. The following sprawling rambling sentence from E. Waugh's novel Vile Bodies, with clauses heaping one over another, testifies to the carelessness, talkativeness and emotionality of the speaker: "Well, Tony rang up Michael and told him that I'd said that William, thought Michael had written the review because of the reviews I had written of Michael's book last November, though, as a matter of fact, it was Tony himself who wrote it." (E.W.) More examples showing the validity of the syntactical pattern were shown in Exercise I on the previous page.

One of the most prominent places among the SDs dealing with the arrangement of members of the sentence decidedly belongs to repetition. ' We have already seen the repetition of a phoneme (as in alliteration), of a morpheme (as in rhyming, or plain morphemic repetition). As a syntactical SD repetition is recurrence of the same word, word combination, phrase for two and more times. According to the place which the repeated unit occupies in a sentence (utterance), repetition is classified into several types:

1. anaphora: the beginning of two or more successive sentences (clauses) is repeated - a..., a..., a... . The main stylistic function of anaphora is hot so much to emphasize the repeated unit as to create the background textile nonrepeated unit, which, through its novelty, becomes foregrounded. The background-forming function of anaphora is also evident from the kind of words which are repeated anaphorically. Pay attention to their semantics and syntactical function in the sentence when working with Exercise II.

2. epiphora: the end of successive sentences (clauses) is repeated -...a, ...a, ...a. The main function of epiphora is to add stress to the final words of the sentence.

3 framing: the beginning of the sentence is repeated in the end, thus forming the "frame" for the non-repeated part of the sentence (utterance) - a... a. The function of framing is to elucidate the notion mentioned in the beginning of the sentence. Between two appearances of the repeated unit there comes the developing middle part of the sentence which explains and clarifies what was introduced in the beginning, so that by the time it is used for the second time its semantics is concretized and specified.

4. catch repetition (anadiplosis). the end of one clause (sentence) is repeated in the beginning of the following one -...a, a.... Specification of the semantics occurs here too, but on a 'more modest level.

5. chain repetition presents several successive anadiploses -...a, a...b, b...c, c. The effect is that of the smoothly developing logical reasoning.

6. ordinary repetition has no definite place in the sentence and the repeated unit occurs in various positions - ...a, ...a..., a.. . Ordinary repetition emphasizes both the logical and the emotional meanings of the reiterated word (phrase).

7. successive repetition is a string of closely following each other reiterated units - ...a, a, a... This is the most emphatic type of repetition which signifies the peak of emotions of the speaker.

As you must have seen from the brief description, repetition is a powerful means of emphasis. Besides, repetition adds rhythm and balance to the utterance. The latter function is the major one in parallel constructions which may be viewed as a purely syntactical type of repetition for here we deal with the reiteration of the structure of several successive sentences (clauses), and not of their lexical "flesh". True enough, parallel constructions almost always include some type of lexical repetition too, and such a convergence produces a very strong effect, foregrounding at one go logical, rhythmic, emotive and expressive aspects of the utterance.

Reversed parallelism is called chiasmus. The second part of a chiasmus is, in fact, inversion of the first construction. Thus, if the first sentence (clause) has a direct word order - SPO, the second one will have it inverted - OPS.

Exercise II. From the following examples yon will get a better idea of the functions of various types of repetition, and also of parallelism and chiasmus:

1. I wake up and I'm alone and I walk round Warley and I'm alone; and I talk with people and I'm alone and I look at his face when I'm home and it's dead, (J.Br.)

2. Babbitt was virtuous. He advocated, though he did not practice, the prohibition of alcohol; he praised, - though he did not obey, the laws against motor-speeding. (S.L.)

3. "To think better of it," returned the gallant Blandois, "would be to slight a lady, to slight a lady would be to be deficient in chivalry towards the sex, and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character." (D.)

4. Halfway along the righthand side of the dark brown hall was a dark brown door with a dark brown settie beside it. After I had put my hat, my gloves, my muffler and my coat on the settie we three went through the dark brown door into a darkness without any brown in it. (W.G)

5. I might as well face facts; good-bye "Susan, good-bye a big car, good-bye a: big house, good-bye power, good-bye the silly handsome drearns. (J.Br.)

6. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. (O.W.)

7. I wanted to knock over the table and hit him until my arm had no more strength in it, then give him the boot, give him the boot, give him the boot - I drew a deep breath. (J.Br.)

8. Of her father's being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure. Sure. (D.)

9. Now he understood. He understood many things. One can be a person first. A man first and then a black man or a white man. (P. A.)

10. She stopped, and seemed to catch the distant sound of knocking.

Abandoning the traveller, she hurried towards the parlour; in the passage

she assuredly did hear knocking, angry and impatient knocking, the

knocking of someone who thinks he has knocked too long. (A.B.)

11. Obviously - this is a streptococcal infection. Obviously. (W.D.)

12. And a great desire for peace, peace of no matter what kind, swept through her. (A.B.)

13. When he blinks, a parrot-like look appears, the look of some heavily blinking tropical bird. (A. M.)

14. And everywhere were people. People going into gates and coming out of gates. People staggering and falling. People fighting and cursing. (P. A.)

15. Then there was something between them. There was. There was. (Dr.)

16. He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being that didn't want to kill or be killed. So he ran away from the battle. (St.H.)

17. Failure meant poverty, poverty meant squalor, squalor led, in the final stages, to the smells and stagnation of B. Inn Alley. (D. du M.)

18. "Secret Love", "Autumn Leaves", and something whose title he missed. Supper music. Music to cook by. (U.)

19. Living is the art of loving.

Loving is the art of caring.

Caring is the art of sharing.

Sharing is the art of living. (W.H.D.)

20. I came back, shrinking from my father's money, shrinking from my father's memory: mistrustful of being forced on a mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father's intention in thrusting that marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the dear noble honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life. (D.)

21. If you know anything that is not known to others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at "all, and any reason for keeping it in your own breast, think of me, and conquer that reason and let it be known! (D.)

22. I notice that father's is a large hand, but never a heavy one when it touches me, and that father's is a rough voice but never an angry one when it speaks to me. (D.)

23. From the offers of marriage that fell to her Dona Clara, deliberately, chose the one that required her removal to Spain. so to Spain she went. (O.W.)

24. There lives at least one being who can never change - one being who would be content to devote his whole existence to your happiness - who lives but in your eyes - who breathes but in your smile - who bears the heavy burden of life itself only for you. (D.) 25. It is she, in association with whom, saving that she has been for years a main fibre of the roof of his dignity and pride, he has never had a selfish thought. It is she, whom he has loved, admired, honoured and set up for the world to respect. It is she, who, at the core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love. (D.)

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. Correspondingly, we differentiate between 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 constitutes additional information which is brought into the question by the inverted wprd order. Interrogative constructions with the direct word order may. be viewed as cases of two-step (double) inversion: direct w/o —» 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 expectation. 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 punctuation (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 modifiers, 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 anduncheered by pleasant companionship, it was not the dark dreary eveningsor the long solitary nights, it was not the absence of every slight and easypleasure for which young hearts beat high or the knowing nothing ofchildhood but its weakness and its easily wounded spirit, that had wrungsuch 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? (T.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.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What syntactical stylistic devices dealing with arrangement of sentence members do you remember?

2. What types of inversion do you know? Which of them have you met more often and why?

3. What is suspense, how is it arranged and what is Us function?

4. What do you know about detachment and punctuation used with detached sentence members?

5. What sentence members are most often detached?

6. Find in your reading material cases of all syntactical SDs based on the re-arrangement or intended specific arrangement of sentence members.

The second, somewhat smaller, group of syntactical SDs deals not so much with specificities of the arrangement as with the completeness of sentence-structure. The most prominent place here belongs to ellipsis, or deliberate omission of at least one member of the sentence, as in the famous quotation from Macbeth: What! all my pretty chickens and their dam // at one fell swoop?

In contemporary prose ellipsis is mainly used in dialogue where it is consciously employed by the author to reflect the natural omissions characterizing oral colloquial speech. Often ellipsis is met close to dialogue, in author's introductory remarks commenting the speech of the characters. Elliptical remarks in prose resemble stage directions in drama. Both save only the most vital information letting out those bits of it which can be easily reassembled from the situation. It is the situational nature of our everyday speech which heavily relies on both speakers' awareness of the conditions and details of the communication act that promotes normative colloquial omissions. Imitation of these oral colloquial norms is created by the author through ellipsis, with the main function of achieving the authenticity and plausibility of fictitious dialogue.

Ellipsis is the basis of the so-called telegraphic style, in which connectives and redundant words are left out. In the early twenties British railways had an inscription over luggage racks in the carriages: "The use of this rack for heavy and bulky packages involves risk of injury to passengers and is prohibited." Forty years later it was reduced to the elliptical: "For light articles only." The same progress from full completed messages to clipped phrases was made in drivers' directions: "Please drive slowly" "Drive slowly" "Slow".

The biggest contributors to the telegraphic style are one-member sentences, i.e. sentences consisting only of a nominal group, which is semantically and communicatively self-sufficient. Isolated verbs, proceeding from the ontological features of a verb as a part of speech, cannot be considered one-member sentences as they always rely on the context for their semantic fulfilment and are thus heavily ellipticized sentences. In creative prose one-member sentences are mostly used in descriptions (of nature, interior, appearance, etc.), where they produce the effect of a detailed but laconic picture foregrounding its main components; and as the background of dialogue, mentioning the emotions, attitudes, moods of the speakers.

In apokoinu constructions the omission of the pronominal (adverbial) connective creates a blend of the main and the subordinate clauses so that the predicative or the object of the first one is simultaneously used as the subject of the second one. Cf: "There was a door led into the kitchen." (Sh. A.) "He was the man killed that deer." (R.W.) The double syntactical function played by one word produces the general impression of clumsiness of speech and is used as a means of speech characteristics in dialogue, in reported speech and the type of narrative known as "entrusted" in which the author entrusts the telling of the story to an imaginary narrator who is either an observer or participant of the described events.

The last SD which promotes the incompleteness of sentence structure is break (aposiopesis). Break is also used mainly in the, dialogue or in other forms of narrative imitating spontaneous oral speech. It reflects the emotional or/and the psychological state of the speaker: a sentence may be broken because the speaker's emotions prevent him from finishing it. Another cause of the break is the desire to cut short the information with which the sentence began. In such cases there are usually special remarks by the author, indicating the intentional abruptness of the end. (See examples in Exercise IV). In many cases break is the result of the speaker's uncertainty as to what exactly he is to promise (to threaten, to beg).

To mark the break, dashes and dots are used. It is only in cast-iron structures that full stops may also appear, as in the well-known phrases "Good intentions, but", or "It depends".

Exercise IV. Discuss different types of stylistic devices dealing with the completeness of the sentence:

1. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind. (D.)

2. Malay Camp. A row of streets crossing another row of streets. Mostly narrow streets. Mostly dirty streets. Mostly dark streets. (P. A.)

3. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side. (D.)

4. A solemn silence: Mr. Pickwick humorous, the old lady serious, the fat gentleman cautious and Mr. Miller timorous. (D.)

5. 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 ruin! (D.)

6. She merely looked at him weakly. The wonder of him! The beauty of love! Her desire toward him! (Dr.)

7. Ever since he was a young man, the hard life on Earth, the panic of 2130, the starvation, chaos, riot, want. Then bucking through the planets, the womanless, loveless years, the alone years. (R.Br.)

8. H. The waves, how are the waves? C.: The waves? Lead. H.: And the sun? C.: Zero.

H.: But it should be sinking. Look again. C.: Damn the sun. H.: Is it night already then? C: No.

H.: Then what is it? C: Grey! Grey! GREY! H.: Grey! Did I hear you say grey? C.: Light black. From pole to pole. (S. B.)

9. I'm a horse doctor, animal man. Do some farming, too. Near Tulip, Texas. (T.C.)

10. "I'll go, Doll! I'll go!" This from Bead, large eyes larger than usual behind his hornrimmed glasses. (J.)

11. A black February day. Clouds hewn of ponderous timber weighing down on the earth: an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The second day of Kennicott's absence. (S.L.)

12. And we got down at the bridge. White cloudy sky, with mother-of-pearl veins. Pearl rays shooting through, green and blue-white. River roughed by a breeze. White as a new file in the distance. Fish-white streak on the smooth pin-silver upstream. Shooting new pins. (J. C.)

13. This is a story how a Baggins had an adventure. He may have lost the neighbours' respect, but he gained - well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end. (A. T.)

14. "People liked to be with her. And —" She paused again, " - and she was crazy about you." (R.W.)

15. What I had seen of Patti didn't really contradict Kitty's view of her: a girl who means well, but. (D.U.)

16. "He was shouting out that he'd come back, that his mother had better have the money ready for him. Or else! That is what he said: "Or else!" It was a threat." (Ch.)

17. "Listen, I'll talk to the butler over that phone and he'll know my voice. Will that pass me in or do I have to ride on your back?''

"I just work here," he said softly. "If I didn't —" he let the rest hang in the air, and kept on smiling. (R.Ch.)

18. I told her, "You've always acted the free woman, you've never let any thing stop you from —" He checks himself, goes on hurriedly. "That made her sore." (J.O'H.)

19. "Well, they'll get a chance now to show -" Hastily: "I don't mean - But let's forget that." (O'N.)

20. And it was unlikely that anyone would trouble to look there -until - until - well. (Dr.)

21. There was no breeze came through the door. (H.)

22. I love Nevada. Why, they don't even have mealtimes here. I never met so many people didn't own a watch. (A. M.)

23. Go down to Lord and Taylors or someplace and get yourself something real nic&to impress the boy invited you. (J. K.)

24. There was a whisper in my family that it was love drove him out and not love of the wife he married. (J. St.)

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 944