The difference between the f. of quantity and f. of quality.

Jargon.

Appeared as a result of defiance of behavior.

Can be subdivided into 2 groups:

· professionalisms. Non-terminological substitutes for prof. terms

(machine gun is replaced by sewing machine bec. of similarity of noise;

gomer=get out of my emergency room; GOK=God Only Knows,

killed an action- put in a bag).

· Official (social) terms. Used to denote non- profess. thing relevant for representatives of a social group with common interests (music fans, drug-addicts…)

(drug-out= a retired soldier returned to active service

Big gun=an important person)

Very close to jargon is cant.

Cant is a secret lingo of the underworld of criminals. Appeared in order to make speech incomprehensible to outsiders.

Slang.

As soon as a slang w. comes to be widely used it stops being felt as wrong. It may pass into the colloq. sphere and later even become neutral.

Ex: photo, phone, flu, mob, movies, exam, joker- colloq. neutral.

taxi, bus, pub, kidnap, skyscraper– neutral.

Novelty is quickly lost due to popularity (constant change in slang). It is very rich in synonyms.

40 slang words to denote money (monkey - five hundred pounds, bread (bread and honey) – money, jack, tin, slippery stuff) and food (chuck, chow, grub, hash)

Such words are v. colorful and expressive.

(mag-magazine, rad-radio, to raise hell- to become very angry, to ig- to ignore, megga-very much (mega backs), a studying machine.)

Various tropes participate in slang formation:

- metaphor (the upper storey =head)

- metonymy (skirt= girl)

- hyperbole (killing= astonishing)

- understatement ( whistle= flute, some= так себе)

- irony (bad= good)

Sources of slangs:

· graphic metaphor

yours truly= I,

· distortions of standart words

cripes! (Christ!)

· acronym ( abbreviations)

prof (professor), congrats (congratulations), desres (desirable residence), SRO (standing room only)= jeans with low waist.

10. Vulgar words.

Stylistically lowest group of words which are too offensive for polite usage.

 

Lexical vulgarisms express considered unmentionable in civilized society. Their very denotation is vulgar. + the so-called “4-letter-words” (damn, shit, hell)

 

Stylistic vulgarisms denote nothing indecent. There is nothing improper about their reference. But their st-c connotations express strong derogatory attitude. Some scholars: they are low slang, affected colloq. speech. (ex: old bean= old man, smeller= nose)

 

V.w-s help to express emotions, emotive and expressive assessment of the object spoken about, perform the function of characterization.

 

 

11. Phraseology and its stylistic use.

Set-phrases are much more expressive than their non-phraseol. counter parts. As well as w-s, phras. units can be stylistically neutral, elevated, etc.

Ex: the elevated phrases

Archaisms:

low and behold

To cost a pretty penny = to cost an arm and a leg

The iron in one’s soul = permanent embitterment

Mahomet’s coffin= between good and evil

To play upon advantage= to swindle

Bookish phrases:

To go to Canossa =to submit

The debt of nature= death

The night of the quill= writer

Gordian knot = a complicated problem

The sword of Damocles

Achilles’s feet

Foreign phrases:

Alma-Mater (barbarism)

A propos de bottes = unconnected with the preceding remark

Most juste= the exact word

 

Subneutral phrases

Colloquial:

Alive and kicking= safe and sound

A pretty kettle of fish= muddle

To fly off the handle= to become angry

Jargon

A loss leader

Old slang:

To be nuts about= to be extremely fond of

To shoot one’s grandmother= to say a non-sensual or commonplace thing

To keep in the pin= to abstain from drinking

To kick the bucket, to hop the twig= to die

Mad as a bicycle, to shoot one’s grandmother

 

A very effective st-c device is intentional violation of phras. units

· The writer pretends to understand the phrase literally thus disclosing the inner form

· The writer reminds the reader of the additional meaning of the components

· The writer insert additional components in the set-expression

· The writer substitutes the beg. words of the phrase.

Sometimes it is accompanied by changes in spelling( Sofa, so good!= so far, so good!)

 

 

12. Figures of speech. Their classification.

Semasiology (onomasiology) is a branch of linguistics that studies stylistic phenomena in the stylistic meaning, investigates shifts of meaning and certain combination of meaning.

Stylistic phenomena effected by various shifts of meanings are usually termed “figures of speech”.

Figures of speech
Figures of replacement (tropes) based on replacement of the habitual name of a thing by its situational substitute; it is one meaning that produces stylistic effect (PARADIGMATIC SEMASILOGY=ONOMASIOLOGY) Figures of co-occurrence based on combination of meaning in speech; it is a combination of at least two meanings that produces stylistic effect (SINTAGMATIC SEMASIOLOGY)
f. of quantity f. of quality f. of identity f. of inequality f. of contrast
- hyperbole - understatement (meiosis) - litotes   - transfer by contiguity(metonymic group): metonymy, synecdoche, periphrasis - transfer by similarity(metaphoric group): metaphor, personification, epithet - transfer by contrast: irony - simile - synonymic repetition   - gradation - anti-climax - antithesis -oxymoron

Tropes (Greek tropos – ‘turning’) are all kinds of transfer of denominations (from a traditional object to a situational object).

The psychological essence of a trope is just the prominence given to two units of sense in one unit of form. Only the double meaning creates an image; we observe a trope only when we see both meanings. If only one meaning then we deal with ‘etymological tropes’ (metaphors), ‘dead’ tropes, which are studied by lexicology. Ex: back of a chair, leg of a table, foot of a hill, выпил целую чашку.

The difference between the f. of quantity and f. of quality.

Quantitative deviation – either saying too much overestimating the dimensions(величина, мера, степень) of the object or saying too little undervaluing the size of the thing , its importance etc.

-Have you got any money on you?

-Yes, I have 3 dollars.(neutral)/Oh, yes, lots! (overestimating)/Yes, just pennies though. (undervaluing)

By quantitative difference we mean a radical difference between the usual meaning of a linguistic unit and its actual reference.

Hey you, green coat! You left your handbag!

A fine friend you are!

 

13. Metonymy and metaphor compared.

Metonymy is a trope based upon a real connection between the 2 objects: that which is named and the name of which is taken. (transfer by contiguity)

I was followed by a pair of heavy boots.

Stereotyped (“etymological”) metonymy (I’m fond of Dickens; I collect old china) have no expressive force as contrasted to genuine metonymy («…за рекой в поселке моя любовь, моя судьба живет»).

The following types of metonymy are differentiated:

1) names of tools instead the names of actions (the guitar played beautifully)

2) consequence instead of cause (the fish desperately takes the death=snaps at the fish-hook)

3) the material instead of the thing made of it: He examined her bronzes and clays.

4)characteristic feature of the object (Hey you, green coat! You left your handbag!)

5) a symbol instead the object symbolized (synecdoche): the crown(= king); a hand(= worker)

Synecdoche – a variety of metonymy: using the name of a part to denote the whole or vice versa.

Stereotyped synecdoche: hands – worker(s); a hundred head of cattle – a part for the whole;

Stop torturing the poor animal! (instead of …the poor dog!)

Reading books when I’m talking to you!

+ Periphrasis(см. 16 билет)

 

Metaphor is a trope based on likeness of the two, there being no actual connection between them. (transfer by similarity)

Time was bleeding away.

The reception was cold.

As they are disconnected, to find features in common, the speaker must search for associations in his own mind that is not as in the case of metonymy, where both objects lie before our eyes. => metaphor requires a greater intellectual effort. Metaphor seems to be a more essential shift (change of semantic planes) than is observed in metonymy.

 

Metaphors:

1) Simple

2) Complex (sustained, prolonged) – one metaphoric statement, creating an image, is followed by another containing the development of the previous metaphor.

“This is the day of your Golden opportunity, Sarge. Don’t let it turn to brass.”

Incongruence of the parts of a complex metaphor is called catachresis (or mixed metaphors):

  • “The Tooth of Time, which has already dried many a tear, will let the grass grow over his painful wound.”
  • “…there is in the hay needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrow into the air, one will come down and hit a glass-house.”

 

Trite metaphors: seeds (roots) of evil, a flight of imagination, to burn with desire. Many of them are set phrases: to fish for compliments, to prick up one’s ears, the apple of one’s eye, to bark up the wrong tree, chewing the rag, with the cards face up, etc.

Fresh metaphors:

“If Aitken found about us the New York job would go up in smoke” (= every chance of getting the New York job would be lost).

“Only briefly did I pay heed to the warning bell (=the feeling of alarm) that rang sharply in my mind.”

Personification is a variety of metaphor, attributing human properties to lifeless objects.

Markers:

-he, she instead of it

-direct address

-capitalization

Functions:

-in classical poetry of the 17th cent. P. was a tribute to mythological tradition and to the laws of ancient rhetoric.

-to impart the dynamic force to the description

-to reproduce a particular mood

-to depict the perception of the outer world by the lyrical hero

· 'No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet

To chase the glowing Hours with flyingfeef.’

· “O, tender Night…”

Allegory is a device by which the names of objects or characters of a story are used in a figurative sense, representing some more general things, good or bad qualities. This is often found in fables {басни) and parables {притчи). It is also a typical feature of proverbs (metonymical A.), which contain generalizations (express some general moral truths):

All is not gold that glitters;

Every cloud has a silver lining;

There is no rose without a thorn;

Make the hay while the sun shines

Metaphorical A.: broken chains - freedom; white dove – peace etc.

 

14. Irony.

Irony(from Greek eironia – ‘mockery concealed’) is a trope based on transfer by contrast; it’s the use of words, phrases, sentences and complete texts with implied meanings that are directly opposite to the primary ones.

A fine friend you are!

Aren 't you a hero — running away from a mouse!

 

There are at least 2 kinds of irony:

1) Antiphrasis – the ironical sense is evident to any native speaker; can give only an ironical message; the peculiar word order and stereotyped words make up set phrases.

That’s a pretty kettle of fish! (Веселенькая история! Хорошенькое дельце!)

2) Utterances which can be understood either literary, or ironically. We cannot say if the speaker is serious or ironical when he says: But of course we know, he’s a rich man, a millionaire. In oral speech, irony is often marked by emphatic intonation, in writing – by inverted comas or italics.

 

The Aim of irony – critical evaluation of the thing spoken about => 2 types:

- “praise stands for blame”: How clever of you!

- “blame stands for praise” (seldom) – astheism: Clever bastard! Tough son-of-a-bitch! (Вот гад дает!)

Ironic coloring – when the whole phrase produce the stylistic effect, separate units of which are not stylistically relevant.

 

15. Hyperbole and meiosis compared.

Hyperbole– exaggeration of dimensions or other properties of the object.

The main sphere of use is colloquial speech. Stereotyped (trite) hyperboles: a thousand pardons, I’ve told you forty times, he was frightened to death, I haven’t seen you for ages.

Hyperboles serve expressive purposes – they are noticed and appreciated by the reader, though he does not take them seriously.

An expressive hyperbole/ as distinct from trite ones (used in everyday speech), is exaggeration on a big scale. There must be smth illogical, unreal, impossible contrary to common sense – in less than no time; без году неделя etc. Paradoxical, illogical hyperboles are employed for humoristic purposes.

Examples:

· “… murmured such a dreadful oath that he would not dare to repeat it to himself”

· “One after another those people lay down on the ground to laugh – and two of them died.”

· “…and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the alley, twenty feet ahead of his squeal.”

· “One does not know whether to admire them, or whether to say ‘Silly fools’.”

· Hyperbole + metaphor (demonstrates a gigantic disproportion between what is named and the characteristics given: “And talk! She could talk the hind leg off a donkey!”

· “… he said in a voice that could have peeled rust off the keel of a ship”(мог снять ржавчину с киля корабля); “…said in a voice that could have loosened a rusty nut off the propeller of a liner…”

· “…in a silence you could lean on…”

 

Meiosis (understatement) – an opposite of hyperbole; it is lessening, weakening the real characteristics of the object, serves to underline the insignificance of what we speak about.

It will cost you a pretty penny. (not a penny but perhaps many pounds or dollars, a large sum of money).

· “And what did you think of our little town?” asked Zizzbaum, with the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite.

· “You’ve got good water, but Cactus City is better lit up.”

· “We’ve got a few lights on Broadway, don’t you think, Mr. Platt?”

 

Varieties of hyperbole (don’t confuse with meiosis!!):

- a cat-size pony (= a very small pony)

- a drop of water (= not much water)

It is meiosis when the speaker understates normal or more than normal (e.g. big) things. When the object spoken about is really small or insignificant, we have a hyperbole.

- he lives a stone’s throw from here (рукой подать)

- just a moment, please = before you could say Jack Robinson

-“She sang listlessly… and the applauseshe collected could have been packed into a thimble without overflowing.”

Hyperbole appeals directly to imagination, being an expression of emotional extravagance. The essence of meiosis is somewhat more complicated and refined; meiosis may be regarded as a kind of strengthening through apparent weakening.

Meiosis has no definite formal expression; various expressive means serve to express it:

- I was half afraid you have forgotten me.

- I kind of liked it.

- She writes rather too often.

- I am not quite too late.

A humorous effect is observed when downtoners (maybe, please, would you mind etc.) co-occur with offensive words in the same utterance:

- It isn’t any of your business maybe.

- Would you mind getting the hell out of my way?

Litotes – a specific form of meiosis, expressing an idea by means of negating the opposite idea.

· Not without his assistance.

· “Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft.”

· “… she was not unlike Morgiana…”

· “.. was not overpleased about it.”

· “… face completed the not-unhandsome picture”

· “He [the policeman’s officer] doesn’t like you any more than we do.”

· -We’d like to see you in the office.

- Right away?

-Or sooner.

· “His grey face was so long that he could wind it twice round his neck.”

· A writing desk the size of a tennis court

· “…the swimming pool, the size Lake Huron…”

 

16. Periphrasis. Epithet. Antonomasia.

Periphrasisdoes not belong with the tropes, but this way of identifying the object of speech is related to metonymy; it’s a direct description of what could be named directly. It couldn’t be expressed by one linguistic unit (the difference from metonymy).

A thriller=two hundred pages of blood-curdling narrative.

Stylistic effect – from elevation to humour.

· “I never call a spade a spade, I call it a bloody shovel.”

· Tea= the cups that cheer but not inebriate.

· Lies=alterations and improvements on the truth.

· “Major Burnaby was doing his accounts or – to use a more Dickens-like phrase – he was looking into his affairs.”

· He shouting indecent phrases = shouting some choice Anglo-Saxon phrases at the policeman.

In 19th century prose P. carries a humoristic load.

· A disturber of a piano keys (a pianist)

· “Up Broadway he turned and halted at a glittering café, where gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm, and the protoplasm.” (the best wine, dresses, people)

Определение (перифраз) из учебника по физике (и даже из учебника по литературе) не будет считаться тропом!

Epithet is a word or phrase containing an expressive characteristic of the object, and thus creating an image.

О dreamy, gloomy, friendly trees!

We can’t expect to find a place for the epithet among the tropes, because it’s not a trope, although it may be metaphoric, metonymic, or ironical.

Fixed epithets (устойчивые) are often found in folklore: my true love; a sweet heart; the green wood; a dark forest; brave cavaliers; merry old England.

 

Antonomasia is the use of name of a historical, literary, mythological, or biblical personage applied to a person whose characteristic features resemble those of the well-known original.

Brutus – a traitor

Don Juan – a ladies’ man

Rockefeller – a rich man

Reversed antonomasia:

hooligan, quiszling (the name of the Norwegian collaborator in the years W. War II)

a mozart of painting

 

In such sentences there is hardly anything of special stylistic significance:

- He has sold his Vandykes.

- I’m fond of Dickens.

- This is my real Goya.

In common nouns – mackintosh, sandwich, shrapnel.

 

17. Simile.

Simile – imaginative comparison; an explicit statement of partial identity (affinity, likeness, similarity) of two objects.

The word explicit used in the definition distinguishes the simile from the metaphor, which presupposes similarity of the notion expressed and the notion implied. When using a metaphor we pretend to believe that the thing named is actually the thing referred to: calling a person a pig the speaker behaves as if he really believed what he said. In a simile the speaker is always aware that untidy, or greedy, or insolent person only looks or acts as does a pig.

Metaphor is a renaming and simile always employs two names of two separate objects. Simile contains at least one more component part – a word or a group of words signalizing the idea of juxtaposition and comparison. Formal signs – conj.: like, as (as if, as though), than; verbs: to resemble, to remind one of; verbal phrases: to bear a resemblance to, to have a look of etc. Examples of trite simile with alliteration:

As dead as a door-nail

As mad as a march hare

As cool as a cucumber

As proud as a peacock

Without alliteration:

To fit like a glove

To smoke like chimney

As fat as a pig

As drunk as a lord

Drunk like fish

A fresh simile, especially elaborate one is one of the best image-creating devices.

Care should be taken not to confuse the simile and any sort of elementary logical comparison. A simile pre supposes confrontation of two objects belonging to radically different semantic spheres; a comparison deals with two objects of the same semantic sphere:

She can sing like professional actress. (log. comparison)

She can sing like a nightingale. (simile)

 

Simile may be combined with or accompanied by another stylistic device, or it may achieve one stylistic effect or another.

Simile + Hyperbole:

  • A young woman was “hotter than a welder’s torch and much, much more interesting.”
  • “He held out a hand that could have been mistaken for a bunch of bananas in a poor light.”
  • “She heaved away from the table like a pregnant elephant.”

Simile + litotes:

  • “His eyes were no warmer than being an iceberg.”
  • “Brandon liked me as much as Hiroshima liked the atomic bomb.”

‘Sustained’ (extended) simile:

  • “…as if a was a millionaire invalid with four days to live, and who hasn’t as yet paid his doctor’s bill.”
  • “…the chicken looked as if it had a sharp attack of jaundice before departing this earth.”
  • “… stood holding a microphone the way a drowning man hangs on the lifebelt.

 

 

18. Quasi- identity (квазитождество).

It’s a case of ‘active identification’.

Your neighbor is an ass.

Jane is a real angel.

Traditionally qualified as examples of metaphors, although only words ass and angel are used metaphorically. Taken as a whole, the two utterances differ greatly from similes. The utterances are not metaphors in the strict sense of the tem: the ‘real’ names of objects precede the figurative ones, and the idea of comparison is quite obvious. On the other hand, they lack what is indispensable for a simile – formal signals of comparison.

Rhematic part of the utterance is metonymy:

· “That old duffer? He’s oil, I guess.” (в нефтяном бизнесе)

· - Caracas is in Venezuela, of course.

- What’s it like?

- Why, it’s principally earthquakes and Negroes and monkeys and malarian fever and volcanoes.

 

Some of quasi-identities manifest special expressive force chiefly when the usual topic – comment positions change places: the metaphoric name appears in the text the 1st, the direct denomination following it.

“The machine sitting at the desk was no longer a man: it was a busy New York Broker.”

“… she short at me with two blue pellets which served her as eyes.”

“Money is time, and writing an entertainment can bring a novelist a very sweet chunk of it”

 

 

19. Repetition of synonyms.

On the whole synonyms are used in actual texts for 2 different reasons:

  1. to avoid repetition.

“The little boy was crying. It was child’s usual time for going to bad but no one paid attention to the kid.” – an example of synonymic replacers (заменители)/variations, when the communicator intentionally ignores any differentiation of meaning in the synonyms.

2. to provide additional shades of the meaning intended.

“Dear Paul, it’s very weak and silly of me, I know, to be so trembly and shaky from head to foot.” – an example of synonymic specifiers (уточнители): the speaker is anxious to make more adequate description of his mental and physical state; two more or less synonymous adjectives are supposed to be stronger than one.

 

Excessive repetition of the same words makes the style poor – in a way it betrays the poverty of one’s vocabulary.

“Piggy’s an awful swell; and he always takes a girl to swell places.<…> where they have swell music and you see a lot of swells…”

 

Interchange of the same thing in speech is called ‘elegant variation’:

  • “He brought home numberless prizes. He told his mother countless stories every night about school companions.”

 

Situational (contextual) synonyms – co-referential units, it’s not synonyms that replace one another but words with essentially different meanings.

The same person can be referred to as neighbour, student, brother, Richard, he etc.

  • “She told his names to the trees. She whispered it to the flowers. She breathed it to the birds.”
  • I feel, I’m aware, I must not forget, I well know.

 

Both synonymous replacers and situational synonyms are usually placed at some distance from one another: they do not immediately follow one another, mostly recurring in adjacent (смежный, соседний) sentences or clauses.

Elegant variation of the names (or synonymic variation) renders the idea of equality, identity to a fuller extent.

 

20. Pun and zeugma.

Pun – play upon words. The semantic essence of this device is based on polysemy and homonymy.

  • “There comes a period in every men’s life, but she is just a semicolon in his.”

Period – промежуток времени; точка.

  • Officer: What steps [=measures] would you take if an enemy tank were coming after you?

Soldier: Long ones.

  • Жизнь бьет ключом – и все по голове.

Pun is ether polysemy actualized in the utterance which has at least 2 meanings => the recipient chooses one (1) or 2 contiguous utterances similar in form, their constituents have essentially different meaning (2).

(1) One swallow does not make a summer.

Swallow – ласточка; глоток

 

Is life worth living?

It depends on the liver.

Liver – печень; человек, существо

 

The child is father of a man.

Father – прародитель; отец

 

(2) It is not my principle to pay the interest, and it’s not my interest to pay the principle. Говори что думаешь, и думай, что говоришь.

Pun is also called calembour (French)

Pretended misunderstanding (here it is mostly intentional treating idioms used in their primary sense):

  • “Why you cannot deny that he has good turns in him.”

“So has the corkscrew.”

  • Cannibal cook: Shall I stew both those cooks we captured from the streamer?

Cannibal king: No, one is enough. Too many cooks spoil the broth.

  • “Sam gave Toby a hug and said, ‘Jesus, you really had us scared’. Toby grinned and said, ‘You don’t have to call me ‘Jesus’ when we’re alone’.”

 

Zeugma consists in combining unequal, semantically heterogeneous incompatible words and phrases.

What makes zeugmatic combinations look uncommon, often humorous – disparity of grammatical types: one may be a free combination, the other an idiom (1); one is an adverbial preposition phrase, the other a prepositional object or attribute (2); grammatical connection is everywhere the same, but each unit pertains to a semantic sphere inconsistent with the other (3).

(1) “… was alternately cudgeling his brains and his donkey.”

Ломал голову себе и ребра – своему ослу.

(2) пил чай с женой с лимоном и с удовольствием

(3)”She dropped a tear and her handkerchief.”

“At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humor, put on kimono, airs and the water to boil for coffee.”

 

21. Climax (gradation) and bathos (anti-climax).

Climax(Greek – ‘ladder’, Latin gradatio – ‘climbing up’) is such an arrangement of ideas in which what precedes is inferior to what follows. The first element is the weakest; the subsequent elements gradually rise in strength.

“I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. I’m so extremely sorry.”

An essential point. Climax is formed by correlative notions, which are supposed to belong to the same semantic plane – words, phrases, sentences may be what is called ‘ideographic synonyms’: their meanings demonstrate different degrees of the property expressed.

  • “What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned?”
  • The book has a power-a very exceptional power – the most powerful book of the month.

 

Bathos– ‘back gradation’.

A real bathos is a sudden deception of the recipient: it consists in adding one weaker element to one or several strong ones, mentioned before.

Produces a humorous effect.

  • “It’s a bloody lie and not quite true.”

Except the cases of intended jest, anti-climax is climax erroneously programmed, disclosing a system of values contradicting our common sense

  • No louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cats

When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last.

  • “A woman who could face the very devil himself or a mouse -…”
  • “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

 

 

22. Antithesis and oxymoron.

Antithesis (from Greek anti ‘against’; thesis ‘statement’) emphasizes the notions really or presumably contrastive. The purpose of using this device is to demonstrate the contradictory nature of the referent. Three varieties of A:

Two words or expressions of the opposite meanings may be used to characterize the same object:

  • “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”
  • «Я царь, - я раб, - я червь, - я бог!»

A. may be used to depict two objects with opposite characteristics:

  • “His fees were high; his lessons were light.”

Two objects may be opposed as incompatible by themselves and each of them obtain a characteristic opposite to that of the other:

  • “For the old struggle – mere stagnation, and in place of danger and death, the dull monotony of security and the horror of an unending decay!”

 

The most natural expression of contrast is the use of antonyms. But objects may be opposite from the particular point of view of the speaker or writer (ex: high fees – light lessons: the price of the lessons is high, their quality low, but if the quality is low the price ought to be low.)

A. of 2 metaphors:

“’You blessed darling’, cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of sunset.”

A. in the mouth of half-educated swindler paying homage to his companion’s philanthropic intentions:

“You have a kind nucleus at the interior of your exterior after all”

Trite antithesis: now or never, dead or alive, yes or no, the first and the last etc.

 

Oxymoron (Greek ‘sharp-dull’) ascribes some feature to an object incompatible with this feature.

  • His honour rooted in dishonour stood

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

  • “O brawling love! O loving hate!”
  • «остро-тупой»

O. discloses the essence of the object full of discrepancies.

“I liked him better than I would like his father… We were fellow strangers.”

 

Отличие от антитезы.

Структурно: оксюморон всегда выражается словосочетанием, а не предложением.

Логически: оксюморон демонстрирует как бы не замечаемую отправителем речи несовместимость семантических компонентов.

 

23 EXPRESSIVE MEANS OF SYNTAX AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION

 

Stylistic syntax is the branch of linguistics which investigates the stylistic value of syntactic forms, stylistic functions of syntactic phenomena, their stylistic classifications as well as their appurtenance to sub-languages or styles.

Forms of sentences and word-combinations may be expressive or neurtal.

We are to take for stylistically neutral the structure of a simple sentence not possesing any particular deformities as regards the number of its constituents or their order.

Any deviation from the normal accepted structure of the sentence changes stylistic value of the utterance, making the sentence stylistically significant – expressive emotionally or belonging to some special sphere of one sub-language or another.

It’s not only syntactival forms of separate sentences (paradigmatic syntax), but the interralation of the contiguous syntactical forms as well (syntagmatic syntax).

 

The expressive means of syntax may be subdivided into:

1) based on absence of logically indispensable elements

· elliptical sentences

· unfinished sentences (aposiopesis)

· nominative sentences

· constructions in which auxiliary elements are missing

· asyndeton

· zeugma

2) based on the excessive use of speech elements (repetition: framing, anadiplosis, prolepsis or syntactic tautology, polysyndeton)

3) consisting in an unusual arrangement of linguistic elements (stylistic inversion)

4) based on interaction of syntactical forms (parallelism: chiasmus, anaphora, epiphora)

5) connection between parts of the sentence (detachment, parenthesis)

6) revaluation of syntactic means (quasi-affirmative, auasi-negative, quasi-imperative, quasi-interrogative sentences, rhetorical question)

 

the most general classification of expressive syntactic means: from the viewpoint of quantative characteristics of the syntactic structure there are only two possible varieties of deviation:

1) the absence of elements which are obligatory in a neutral construction

2) excess of non-essential elements

 

With dropping of some sentence elements the stylistic appurtenance of a sentence changes into stylistically significant.

Additional words and more complicated constructions aim at emphasizing the thought expressed.

 

24 ELLIPSIS. NOMINATIVE SENTENCES. APOSIOPESIS.

Ellipticalare those sentences in which one or both principle parrts (subject and predicate) are felt as missing, since theoretically they could be restored.

They’re typical of oral communication, especially colloquial speech. But there they’re not stylistically marked. In other spheres allipsis is used for a certain stylistic aim.

The missing elements are supplied by the context (lingual or extra-lingual). They’re either present in the context or they’re implied by the situation.

They impact a certain tinge of familiarity; a certain emotional tension to the narration. In personative discourse they’re used to make speech more natural, they render informal character to speech. The brevity (краткость) of the sentences and abruptness of their intonation impart a certain tinge of sharpness to them.

Sometimes the omission of subjects contribute to the acceleration of the tempo to speech.

 

They’re often used in dictionaries, reference books (справочники), diaries, telegrams for the sake of business-like brevity. In oral speech and fiction using of ellipsis aims at economy and expressiveness.

 

In contemporary prose ellipsis is mainly used in dialogue where it is conciously employed by the author to reflect the natural omittions characterising oral colloquial speech.

 

  • What are you doing? – nothing.
  • He bacame one of the prominent men of the House. spoke clean and modesty, and was never too long…
  • - I don’t want my husband to know that I’m – I’m… - Affiliated to art?
  • ALICE: “Where’s the man I’m going to marry?” GENERVA: “Out in the garden” ALICE: “What’s he doing out here?” GENERVA: “Annoying Father” – the first answer ai a potential adverbial modifier of place used independently; the second – part of the simple predicate plus direct object.
  • “Were they interesting books?” – “Don’t know. Havent read them. Looked pretty hopeless.” – pronouns are omitted.
  • “Will you and Jonnie come in and have drinks with us this evening, Maurenn?” – “Love to.” – the subject and the modal verb of a complex preficate “I should” are missed.
  • “Stop it, Earne”, sha said. – “Sha’nt” (неа), said Ernie and continued. – the only part present is the auxiliary verb in the negative form
  • “Perhaps, perhaps not” – compound expressive alternative.
  • “Trying for date and site London versus Patterson will inform you have patience” – a text of a telegram. Participal predicates replaced verbal ones.
  • “Just arrived. elethant passed through half an hour ago, creating wildes fight and excitement. Elephant tanged arounf streets; two plumbers going by killed one – other escaped. Regret general. Detective.” – the text of a telegram. Articles are missed. “regret general” = “There is a general regret”.
  • “Why unnews query” – “unnews good news” – “unnews unjob” – the absolutely specific feature of the sublanguage of telegrames is the unusually extensive use of prefix un- .
  • Mesaage in drivers’ direction: “Slow” (instead of “Please drive slowly”)
  • His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side.
  • “The wives, how are the wives?” – “The wives? Lead.” – “And the sun?” – “Zero”.
  • "Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends."(Virginia Woolf)
  • "True stories deal with hunger, imaginary ones with love."

ABSENCE OF AUXILIARY ELEMENTS

Auxiliary words “have, do, be, will” as well as the link verb “be” are very often dropped in informal oral communication.

A sentence comprising both subject and predicate (either complete or in part) is not elliptical: we might call a sentence with the subject and a nominal, a participal, or an infinitival part of the predicate morphologically incomplete, but not elliptical, as it has its both principal parts.

NOMINATIVE SENTENCES

Predicate is omitted in nominative sentences. Omitted member is difficult to restore.

Nom.sent-s are used in descriptive purpose; to impact dynamic force.

FUNCTION: to attract the reader’s attention to a certain idea; stating the existence of a thing.

  • London. Fog everywhere. Implacable November Weather.
  • Dusk – of a summer night.
  • “But of they should! If they should guess! The horror! The flight! The exposure! The police!...” (Dreiser) – a succession of nom sent-s reflects the state of mind of the hero and invigorates the dynamic force of narration.

 

Nominative sentences are widely used in stage directions (especially in initial, opening remarks, serving the same purpose as expositions in novels or stories).

  • Lady Sneerwell’s dressing-room. Lady Sneerwell discovered at her toilet; Snake drinking chocolate.
  • In manner, close and dirty. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind.
  • Malay Camp. A row of streets crossing another row of streets. Mostly narrow streets. Mostly dirty streets. Mostly dart streets.
  • Ever since he was a young man, the hard life on Earth, the panic of 2130. the starvation, cheos, panic riot, want. Then bucking throuh the planets, the womanless, loveless years, the alone years.

UNFINISHED SENTENCES (APOSIOPESIS)

Means “silence”. The speaker doesn’t bring the utterance to the end. Deliberate abstraction from bringing the sentence to the end, you don’t want it = you do it deliberately. Don’t confuse the aposiopesis with cases when speaker is overwhelmed with emotion.

Aposiopesis confines the speaker’s mode of expression to a mere allusion, a mere hint at what remains unsaid.

An utterance unfinished due to external reasons (state of agitation, sudden change of curcamstances) is not a stylistic device, as in the following case:

  • My God! If the police come – find me here – (He dashes to the door. Then stops).

To mark the break dashes and dots are used. It’s only in cast-iron structures that full stops may also appear, as in the well-known phrases:

  • It depends, you know.
  • Good intentions, but.

Aposiopesis may be illustrated by such ready-made incomplete sentences as :

  • Of all the…
  • Well, I never!

Both can have the same implication: such impudence (наглость) is unexpected)

A special variety of unfinished sent-s are represented by conditional clauses used independently:

· If they only knew that!

Examples of aposiopesis:

· Well, I must say that’s a wonderful way of wasting tax-payers ‘money’, - Aitken growled. – Of all the damned nonsense I’ve run into…”

· You herd what the guy said: get out or else.

· “This story really doesn’t get anywhere at all. The rest of it comes later – sometimes when Piggy asks Dulcie to dine with hin, and she’s feeling lonelier than usual, and general Kitchener happens to be looking the other way; and than –“ (O.Henry) – the author invites the reader to get vent to his own imagination.

· This a story how a Beggins had an adventure. He may have lost the neigbour’s respect, but he gained – well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.

· “people liked to be with her. And –“ she paused again. “- and she was crazy about you”

· What I had seen of Patti didn’t really contradict Kitty’s view of her: a girl who means well, but.”

· 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.”

· “I just work here’, he said softly. ‘If I didn’t-“ he let the rest hang in the air, and kept on smiling.

· 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.”

· “well, they’ll get a chance now to show –“ (Hastily): “I don’t mean – But let’s forget that.”

· And it was unlikely that anyone would trouble to look there-until-until-well.

· "And there’s Bernie layin’

On the couch, drinkin’ a beer

And chewin’--no, not chewin’--poppin’.

So I said to him,

I said, 'Bernie, you pop that

Gum one more time . . .'

And he did.

So I took the shotgun off the wall

And I fired two warning shots . . .

Into his head."

("Cell Block Tango," from Chicago, 2002)

· Go down to Lord and Taylors or someplace and get yourself something real nice to impress the boy invited you.

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.

  • There was a door led into the kitchen.
  • He was the man killed the deer.

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 og narrative known as “entrusted” in which the author entrusts the telling of the story to an imaginary narrator who is either an obsever or participant of the discribed events.

 

  • There was no breeze came through the door.
  • I never met so many people didn’t own a watch.
  • There was a whisper in my family that it was love drove him out and love of the wife he married.

25 ASYNDETON AND POLYSYNDETON

The arrangement of sentence members, the completeness of sentence structure involve various types of connection used within the sentence or between them.

 

Asyndeton means “absence of conjunctions.” – deliberate omission of conjunctions. Asyndeton connection of sentences and parts of sentences is based on the lexical meaning of the unites combined.

The stylistic function: brevity, acceleration of the tempo, colloquial character. It imparts dynamic forse to the text.

  • He notices a slight stane on the window-side rug. He cannot change it with the other rug, the are a different size”
  • Students would have no need to “walk the hospitals” if they had me. I was a hospytal in myself.”

In colloquial speech the most frequent are conditional and temporal asyndetic adverbial clauses:

  • You want anything, you pay for it.
  • You get older, you want to feel that you accomplish something.

Attributive and object clauses in English are very often joined to the principle clause asyndetically:

  • He said he had seen it before.
  • The man he met yesterday was an old friend of him.

Such sentences are not regurded as colloquial, but yet there is something informal about them. In a formal text sentences with conjunctions would be preferable.

 

  • "He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac."

(Jack Kerouac, On the Road)

POLYSYNDETON - Repeated use of conjunctions.

Ocasionally it may creat a general impression of solemnity, due to certain association woth the style of the Bible.

  • And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon the house; and it fell; and great was the fall of it”

 

The conjunction “and” is the most frequent.

In poetry and fiction the repetition of “and” either underlines the sumalteniety of actions, or close connection of properties enumerated.

  • It (the tent) is soaked and heavy, and it flogs about, and tumbles down on you, and clings round your head, and makes you mad”.

On the other hand the conjunction “and” is extremely often used in colloquial speech, where it is not a stylistic device but mere pleonasm caused by the poverty of the speaker’s vocabulary:

  • I always been a good girl; and I never offered to say a word to him; and I don’t owe him nothing; and I don’t care; and I won’t be put upon; and I have my feelings the same as anyone else”

 

It may also create an atmosphere of monotony.

 

Other examples of polysyndeton:

  • "Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war--not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government--not any other thing. We are the killers."
  • "Standing still, I can hear my footsteps

Come up behind me and go on

Ahead of me and come up behind me and

With different keys clinking in the pockets,

And still I do not move."

(W.S. Merwin, "Sire." The Second Four Books of Poems. Copper Canyon Press, 1993)

Both, polysendeton and asyndeton, have a strong rhyttmic impact. Besides, the function of polysendeton is to strengthen the idea of equal logical (emotive) importance of connecting sentences, while asyndeton, cutting off connecting words, helps to create the effect of terse (cжатый, краткий), energetic, active prose.

 

These two types of connection are more characteristics of the author’s speech.

The third type – attachment (gap-sentence link, annexation) on the contrary, is mainle to be found in reported speech, intrustive narrative, in representations of the voice of the personage-dialogue. The second part of the utterance is separated from the first one by a full stop though their semantic and grammatical ties remain very strong. The second part appears as an after-thought and is often connected with the beginning with the help of the conjunction .

  • “It wasn’t his fault. It was yours. And mine…”

 

 

26.SYNTACTIC TAUTOLOGY [tɔː'tɔləʤɪ]

PROLEPIS, or syntactic tautology is repetition of the noun subject in in the form of a personal pronoun.

The stylistic puprose – to emphasize the subject, make it more conspicuous = topicalization (communicative emphasis) of the ‘theme’.

The noun subject separated from the rest of the sentence by the unsressed pronominal subject comes to be detached from the sentence – made more prominent, more ‘rheme-like’:

  • Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty days and nights without walking up”

Prolepsis is especislly typical of popular speech = uncultivated speech (speech of uneducated people):

  • Bolivar, he’s plenty tired, and he can’t carry double.

Prolepsis is often met with in nursery rhymes and in folk ballads (or their imitations):

  • Jack Sprat’s pig,

He was not very little,

He was not very big…

Little Miss Muffet

She sat on a tuffet…

A phenomenon, grammatically opposite to prolepsis, but often confused with it, is the anticipatory use of personal pronouns. The stylistic function of anticipatory constructions is emphasis of the ‘rheme’: ots semantic weight, its informative force is thus enhanced:

  • Oh, it’s a fine life, the life of the gutter.
  • She has developed power, this woman – this – wife of his! (Galsworthy)

 

Tautology in appended sentences:

‘appended statement’ – repetition of the sentence in a very general manner. To be more exact, what is additionally said is not the preceding sentence, but only the abstract scheme of it.

An appendent statement consists of two elements: the pronominal subject and an auxiliary or modal verb representing the predicate of the main sentence.

Appended sentences are always intensifiers, just as any other kind of repetition:

  • I’m a good girl, I am.
  • I washed my hands and face afore I come, I did… I know what the like of you are, I do.
  • ‘You’ve made the nice mess, you have… you’d get a scaffolding pole entangled, you would…’

Some grammarians consider them as a typical feature of ‘popular speech’, but they’re more like signs of unrestrained emotion. We can class them under colloquial speech.

 

Emphasizing of the rheme of the utterance – turning a simple sentence into a complex one.

The part of the simple sentence to be emthasized (ots subject, object or adverbial modifier) is made the predicative of the principle clause (the pronoun it is followed by the link-verb), the rest of the simple sentence is made an appostive subordinate clause introduced by the conjunction that:

  • We met him on Friday. => It was on Friday that we met him.
  • It was she who made me cry.

 

 

27. SIMPLE REPETITION. PARALLELISM.

Paradigmatic syntax deals with lexical repetition.

REPETITION is purely syntactical whenever what is repeated is not a word, but an abstract syntactical position only. This is observed in any sentence comprising two or more homogeneous parts:

  • Men, women, children were running.
  • Compare: people were running.

The idea of totality of flight is expressed in the first more emphatically.

 

If the homogeneous parts are synonyms, we observe ‘synonimic repetition’:

  • Joe was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish dear fellow. – intensification.

 

Repetition is an expressive stylistic mean widely used in all varieties of emotional speech – in poetry and rhetoric, imaginative prose, everyday intercourse, collooquial speech. On the contrary, such repetition hardly occurs in scientific, technological or legal texts: official documents.

Repetition within phrases tylical of coll.speech concerns mostly qualifiyng words, adverbs and adjectives:

  • Very, very good
  • For ever and ever
  • A little, little girl
  • They both looked hard, tough and ruthless, and they both looked very, very lethal.
  • Yeah, uh, you’ve been busy busy busy, aren’t you?
  • Oh, the dreary, dreary moorland!

Oh, the barren, barren shore!

  • Gold! Gold! Gold!

Bright and yellow, hard and cold,

Molten, graven, hammer’d and roll’d,

Heavy to get and light to hold. – “gold” being repeated four times proclaims the all-penetrating power of gold.

  • Scrooge went to bed again, and thought and thought it over and over and over. – the repetition emthatically underlines intensity and duration of the process: he thought laboriously; he was plunged into intensive and continious thinking.

The element repeated attracts the reader’s attention as being the most important; in a way it imparts additional sense to the whole of the utterance.

Two kinds of repetition: framing and anadiplosis. But it’s syntagmatic syntax that deals with them.

 

PARALLELISM (syntagmatic syntax)

Repetition may concern sentenses’ syntactic structure as well. Assimilation or even identitiy of two or more neighbouring sentences is called parallelism (parallel constructions).

As a matter of fact, parallelism is a variety of repetition, but not a repetition of lexically identical sentences, only a repetition of syntactic constructions:

  • John kept silent, Marry was reading. – purely syntactical repetition = parallelism.
  • “The cook is crowing,

The stream is flowing,

The small birds switter,

The lake doth glitter.”

 

Much more often it happens that parallel sentences contain the same lexical elements. In this case we deal with lexico-syntactical repetitions. In these, the lexical identity of certain parts of neighbouring sentences is not an optional occurrence (as in the case with parallelism), but quite obligatory. Among them we can discern the following lexico-syntactical devices: anaphora, epyphora, symploca, anadiplosis, chiasmus.

  • Farewell to the forests and wild-hangigng woods,

Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods…” – anaphora

 

 

28. DETACHMENT. PARENTHESIS.

There are two polar types of syntactic connection in the sentence:

1) The communicative type: the subject-predicate (or the theme-rheme) relation serves to convey a piece of information

2) The nominative type: secondary relations, i.e. relations between secondary parts of a centence, make (together with their head-words) mere word-combinations, i.e. composite denominations, functionally equivalent to simple words. – the purpose of naming. Connections of the second type resemble one another: that of an attribute to its head-word, of an object or an adverbial modifier to its predicate verb.

3) between two polar types there exists intermediate type – a semi-predicative connection which occurs when a secondary part becomes “detached”.

Detachmentmeans that a secondary member:

a) becomes phonetically separated

b) obtains emphatic stress

c) changes its habitual position (not necessary).

This secondary part remaining what it has been (an attribute etc.), at the same time assumes a function of an additional predicative; it comes to resemble the predicate. The speaker makes a hort pause before (and often after) the detached segment and lays special stress on it. As a result, the word (phrase) appears to be apposed to the rest of the sentence. Hence, the detached part is underlined as smth specially important. Form the view point of communicative syntax, ot acquires a ‘rheme-like’ status – it becomes ‘semi-communicative’, not just nominative.

 

Detachment makes the word prominent => emphasis.

Theoretically any secondary part of the sentence can be detached.

  • Smither should choose it for her at the stores – nice and dappled. – attribute
  • Very small and child-like, he never looked more than fourteen. – attribute.
  • Talent, Mr.Micaber has, capital, Mr.Micaber has not. – direct object.
  • And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted – nevermore! – adv.modifier
  • It was indeed, to Forsyte’s eyes, an odd house – prepositional object
  • Brave boy, he saved my life and shall not regret it – appositive.

Detached parts are separated from the rest by punctuation marks (mostly by commas and dashes).

 

The general stylistic effect is strengthening, emphasizing the word (or phrase).

Detachment imparts additional syntactical meaning to the word.

· How could John, with his heart of gold, leave his family? – a detached phrase can be qualified as an adverbial modifier of concession.

 

PARENTHETIC ELEMENTS (WORDS, PHRASES AND SENTENCES) –

Disconnected grammatically with their syntactical surroundings. They either express modality of what is predicated or imply additional information.

Parenthetic elements comprising additional information seem to be a kind of protest against the linear character of the text: the language user interrupts himself trying to say to things at once.

 

Words, phrases and sentences of modal meaning may be divided into two classes:

1