Absence of elements which are obligatory in a neutral construction.

Lecture 6

Syntactical stylistics

What is studied here is a set of parallel syntactical structures and their comparative stylistic analysis. We shall consider special forms of syntactical organization of English speech used as expressive means thus rendering the utterance additional semantic shades. These forms are purposeful deviations from the neutral syntactical norm of the English language. Under deviations of the norm we understand, for instance, absence of expected members of the sentence, their repetition or unusual distribution in the sentence. They are apt to produce a certain stylistic effect. And the analysis of such cases is the subject of syntactical stylistics. Stylistic effect can be created not only within one sentence but within larger and more complicated spans of utterance (sentences, paragraphs, chapters and the whole work).

In accordance with syntactical stylistic expressive means can be classified as follows:

1. From the point of view of quantitative characteristics of the syntactical structure there are two possible varieties of deviations---a. the absence of elements which are obligatory in a neutral construction; b. excess of non-essential elements/redundancy of syntactical elements.

2. With regard to the distribution of the elements we should deal with various types of inversion.

3. By analyzing the general syntactical meanings, communicative aims of sentences, stylistic effect of shifts in syntactical means of changes in the use of syntactical forms are established.

Absence of elements which are obligatory in a neutral construction.

Ellipsis(of Greek origin ‘ellipsis’ – недостаток, нехватка)

The deliberate omission of one or more principal words (usually the subject, the predicate). The missing parts are either present in the syntactical environment of the sentence (context) or they are implied by the situation.

For example, ‘The ride did Ma good. Rested her.’ (D. Carter) The second sentence is elliptical, as the subject of the sentence is missing.

The omission of some parts of the sentence is an ordinary and typical feature of the oral type of speech. In belles-lettres style the peculiarities of the structure of the oral type of speech are partially reflected in the speech of characters.

Ex. ‘I’ll see nobody for half an hour, Marcey,’ said the boss. ‘Understand? Nobody at all.’ (Mansfield)

The omission of some parts of the sentence in the example given above reflects the informal and careless character of speech.

Some parts of the sentence may be omitted due to the speaker’s excitement. Such cases of omission reflecting the natural structure of the oral type of speech are not a stylistic device.

The stylistic device of ellipsis is sometimes used in the author’s narrative, but more frequently it is used in represented speech.

Ex. ‘Serve him right, he should arrange his affairs better!’ So any respectable Forsyte’ (Galsworthy). The predicate is missing and the reader is to supply what is omitted.

The stylistic device of ellipsis not only makes the sentence laconic and prominent but creates the effect of implication forcing the reader to read between the lines.

The stylistic device of ellipsis used in inner represented speech creates a stylistic effect of the natural abruptness and the fragmentary character of the process of thinking.

Ex. ‘It would have been a good idea to bring along one of Doc’s new capsules. Could have gone into a drug store and asked for a glass of water and taken one.’ (D. Carter).

Nominative sentences/One-member sentences. The communicative function of a nominative sentence is a mere statement of the existence of an object, a phenomenon: ‘London. Fog everywhere. Implacable November weather.’

Though syntactically different from elliptical sentences, nominative sentences (which comprise only one principal part expressed by a noun or a noun equivalent) resemble the former because of their brevity. Nominative sentences are especially (important) suitable for preliminary descriptions introducing the reader to the situation. They are often used to present the background of the action as in the example:

‘Men, palms, red plush seats, white marble tables, waiters in aprons. Miss Moss walked through them all.’ (Mansfield)

One-member sentences may be used to heighten the emotional tension of the narrative or to single out the character or the author’s attitude towards what is happening.

Absence of auxiliary elements.

Auxiliary verbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions as well as the link verb be are very often dropped in informal oral communication.

‘I been waiting here all morning…’ (Robbins)

‘You feel like telling me?’ (Salinger)

‘She still writing poetry?’ (Miller)

‘That be enough?’ (Markus)

Articles, both the definite and indefinite are omitted in the following examples:

‘Third time lucky—that will be the idea.’ (Christie)

‘Post here yet?’ (Amis)

‘Chair comfortable?’ (Pinter)

‘Beautiful woman, but no subtlety…’ (Christie)

The articles are mostly dropped when the noun or the nominal group occupy the initial position in the sentence.

Prepositions are absent mostly in adverbial modifiers of place and time:

‘Where was he born?’

‘London.’ (Kanin)

‘What time did you get in?’ (Amis)

‘I told you we’ll go Friday.’ (Hellman)

Zeugmais use of a word in the same grammatical relation to the adjacent word in the context, one metaphoric and the other literal in sense. e. g. The boys took their books and places. (Dickens) At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humour, put on kimano, airs, and the water to boil for coffee.(O. Henry) Two cases of using zeugma – v. to get(out) is blended with n. bed and humour forming a free word-combination with the first and a phraseological unit with the second; v. to put on yokes with three words and in each of the three combinations its semantics is different: надела кимоно, напустила на себя важный вид, ставила воду. Stylistic effect caused by zeugma lies entirely in the sphere of semantics. The use of zeugma serves, as a rule, humouristic purposes; the comic is caused by contrariness between identity of constructions and their semantic heterogeneity. Very often combinations forming zeugma are syntactically homogeneous members of the sentence and from the view point of the formal structure of the sentence do not violate syntactical norm. e.g. She dropped a tear and a handkerchief.(Dickens) She possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart. ( O.H.) Zeugma is a stylistic device, as it is based on intentional ‘economy’ of syntactical means with the aim of a certain stylistic result. Lecture 9

IB.

Excess of non-essential elements.(Redundancy of syntactical elements) The redundancy, structural and material, occurs, first of all, in the increased number of elements used. It must be borne in mind that all superfluous elements have a stylistic feature in common: additional words and more complicated constructions aim at emphasizing the thought (or part of the thought) expressed.

Repetition as a stylistic device is recurrence of the same word or phrase within the sentence with the view of expressiveness. Examples of repetition are abundant in colloquial speech; as well as in poetry, imaginative prose, and emotional public speeches; and hardly ever occur in scientific, technological or legal texts. Repetition within phrases (parts of the sentence) typical of colloquial speech concerns mostly qualifying adverbs and adjectives: very, very good; for ever and ever ; a little, little girl.

e.g. They both looked hard, tough and ruthless, and they both looked very, ,very, very lethal. (Chase) Scrooge went to bed again and thought and thought and thought it over and over and over. (Dickens) The element (elements) attract the reader’s attention as being the most important; in a way it imparts additional sense to the whole utterance. Repetition as an expressive device, as a means of emphasis, should be differentiated from cases of chance recurrence of the same word in an unprepared, confused or stuttering colloquial speech: ‘I-I-I never met her before here’.

Syntactical tautology (or prolepsis). The term implies recurrence of the noun subject in the form of the corresponding personal pronoun. The stylistic function of this construction is emphasis. The noun subject separated from the rest of the sentence by the unstressed pronominal subject comes to be detached from the sentence – made more prominent. e.g. Miss Tillie, she slept forty days and nights without waking up. (O.H.) The use of the redundant pronominal subject is a typical feature of popular speech. e.g. The widow Douglass, she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me… (M. Twain) Sometimes prolepsis occurs in quite an opposite form: the recurrence of the personal pronoun in the form of the noun subject. e.g. She developed power, this woman – this wife of his. (Galsworthy)

Parallelism.Repetition may also concern the syntactical structure of sentences. Adjacent sentences are often identical or analogous by their syntactical structures. Assimilation or even identity of two or more neighbouring sentences is called parallelism (parallel constructions). Parallelism, as a matter of fact, is a variety of repetition, but not a repetition of lexically identical sentences, only a repetition of syntactical costructions: John kept silent; Mary was thinking. The two sentences are identical structurally, but different lexically. Parallelism strongly affects the rhythmical organization of the paragraph, so it is eminent in oratoric speech, in pathetic extracts. More often it so happens that parallel sentences contain the same lexical elements:

Anaphora. This term implies identity of beginnings of one or several initial elements in adjacent sentences (stanzas, paragraphs). This device serves the purpose of strengthening the element that recurs. e.g. Farewell to the forests and wild hanging woods, Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods…(Burns) The anaphoric Farewell to the… is accompanied by complete parallelism of the rest of each line.

Epiphora.Thisstylisticfigure is opposed to anaphora. It is recurrence of one or several elements concluding two or more syntactical units. e.g. The white washed room was pure white as of old, the methodical book-keeping was in peaceful progress as of old, and some distant howler was hanging against a cell door as of old. Epiphora, to a still greater extent than anaphora, regulates the rhythm and makes prose resemble poetry.

Framing. This term is used to denote the recurrence of the initial segment at the very end of a syntactictal unit (sentence, paragraph, stanza):

‘Money is what he’s after, money.’ (Galore)

‘Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder.’ (Dickens)

Anadiplosis (from the Greek ‘doubling’): the final element or elements of a sentence, paragraph, stanza, etc. recurs at the very beginning of the next sentence, paragraph, stanza.

‘With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy; happy at least in my own way.” (Bronte)

Chiasmus (from the letter X—chi) means crossing. The term denotes what is sometimes characterized as ‘parallelism reversed’: two syntactical constructions (sentences or phrases) are parallel, but their members (words) change places, their syntactical positions. What is the subject in the first becomes an object or a predicative in the second (thus their functions change.)

e.g. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail.’ (Dickens)

Polysyndeton. The term, as opposed to ‘syndeton,’ means excessive use (repetition) of conjunctions—the conjunction ‘and’ in most cases. In poetry and fiction, the repetition of ‘and’ either underlines the simultaneity of actions or close connection of properties enumerated. A classical example of polysyndeton of this kind is the famous poem by Robert Southey. A few lines will suffice:

Advancing and glancing and dancing, and prancing

Recoiling, toiling, and toiling and boiling,

And dashing, and flashing, and splashing, and clashing;

And so never ending, and always descending….

And in this way the water comes down at Lodore.

e.g. He put on coat and found his mug and plate and knife and went outside (Aldridge).

It may also promote a high-flown tonality of narrative as in the example:

And only one thing really troubled him sitting there—the melancholy craving in his heart—because the sun was like enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves…. (Galsworthy).

On the other hand, excessive use of the conjunction ‘and’ often betrays the poverty of the speaker’s syntax, showing the primitiveness of the character.

e.g. It (the tent) is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down on you, and clings around your head, and makes you mad. (J?)