Syntactical SD (SSD)

Syntactical SD (SSD) – I.R.Galperin Stylistic study of the syntax begins with the study of the length and the structure of a sentence but is not reduced to it. Such things as word order, communicative function and punctuation are also to be considered. The effect of the majority of other syntactical stylistic devices depends on either the completeness or quantitative characteristics of the structure or on the arrangement of its members. (V.A.Kukharenko, Y.M.Skrebnev) According to the completeness and quantitative characteristics of the syntactic structure the following syntactic stylistic devices are identified: I. The omission/absence of elements that are obligatory in a neutral construction: • Ellipsis - is the omission of a word necessary for the complete syntactical construction of a sentence, but not necessary for understanding. The stylistic function of ellipsis used in the author's narration is to change its tempo, to connect its structure. e.g. You feel all right? Anything wrong or what? Ellipsis (absence of one or both principal parts – the subject, the predicate; typical, first and foremost, of colloquial speech; thus, it is usually used in dialogues, in represented speech, sometimes in monologues, narration, and exposition; ellipsis is the basis of the so-called telegraphic style, in which connectives and redundant words are left out); absence of auxiliary elements (such as auxiliary verbs, articles, prepositions); Ellipsis: an intentional omission of one or more words: “a poor boy … no father, no mother, no any one”. ◦ One-member sentences, nominative sentences among them, (the communicative function is a mere statement of the existence of an object, a phenomenon; thus, they are mostly occur in exposition; due to their laconic character one-member sentences appeal to the reader’s imagination; one-member sentences are also the basis of the telegraphic style); ◦ Break (Break - in - the narrative) or aposiopesis (Greek “silence”; intentional abstention from continuing the utterance to the end, 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; to mark the break mainly dashes and dots are used). Sudden break in the narration has the function to reveal agitated state of the speaker. e.g. On the hall table there were a couple of letters addressed to her. One was the bill. The other... Aposiopesis: a sudden intentional break in the narrative or a dialogue: “Well, I never …” ◦ Asyndeton is a deliberate avoidance of conjunctions (deliberate omission of conjunctions); in constructions in which they would normally used. E.g. He couldn't go abroad alone, the sea upset his liver, he hated hotels. “People sang, people fought, people loved.” ◦ Apokoinu constructions (the omission of the pronominal / adverbial connective, that creates a blend of the main and subordinate clauses so that the predicate or the object of the first one is simultaneously used as the subject of the second one, as in “There was a door led into the kitchen”(Sh.A.), thus the impression of clumsiness of speech is produced); II.The redundancy/excess of non-essential elements; a) repetition (recurrence of the same word, word combination or phrase two or more times); b) polysyndeton - is an identical repetition of conjunctions: used to emphasize simultaneousness of described actions, to disclose the author’s subjective attitude towards the characters, to create the rhythmical effect. Polysyndeton (as opposed to asyndeton means excessive use of conjunctions – “and” as a rule, in which case either the simultaneity of actions, or close connection of properties enumerated, or their equal importance is focused upon); Polysyndeton is an insistent repetition of a connective between words, phrases, clauses. e.g. “They were from Milan and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier.” (E.Hemingway) The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. c) prolepsis, or syntactic tautology (recurrence of the noun subject in the form of the corresponding personal pronoun; the aim being the communicative emphasis of the theme, making it more prominent, more ‘rheme-like’, as in “Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty days and nights without waking up” (O. Henry); d) tautology in appended statements (as in “I washed my hands and face afore I come, I did…”, from Bernard Shaw); e) emphasising the rheme of the utterance (the usage of the emphatic introductory construction It + be; What S–V+ is). f) parallel construction is a device which may be encountered not so much in the sentence as in the macro - structures dealt with the syntactical whole and the paragraph. The necessary condition in parallel construction is identical or similar, syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of sentence. g) chiasums is based on repetition of syntactical patterns, but it has a reversed order in one of the utterances. Chiasmus is reversed parallelism: a b, b a. E.g. “I looked at the gun and the gun looked at me” (R.Ch.) She was a good sport about all this, but so was he. Two syntactical constructions are parallel, but their members change their syntactical positions, thus, what is the subject in the first, becomes an object or a predicative in the second; a head-word and its attribute change places and functions likewise. According to the distribution (arrangement) of the elements the following syntactic stylistic devices are identified (see V.A.Kukharenko, Y.M.Skrebnev): 1. Stylistic Inversion. The English word order is fixed. Any change which doesn't influence the meaning but is only aimed at emphasis is called a stylistic inversion. Stylistic inversion aims at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the utterance. Therefore a specific intonation pattern is the inevitable satellite of inversion. Inversion is based on the partial or complete replacement of the language elements and violation of the word order: “Women are not made for attack. Wait they must” (J.C.) The following patterns of stylistic inversion are most frequently met in both English prose and English poetry. 1. The object is placed at the beginning of the sentence. 2. The attribute is placed after the word it modifies, e.g. With fingers weary and worn. 3. The predicate is placed before the subject, e.g. A good generous prayer it was. 4. The adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence. E.g. My dearest daughter, at your feet I fall. 5. Both modifier and predicate stand before the subject, e.g. In went Mr. Pickwick. Various types of stylistic inversion (change of word-order), aimed at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the sentence: complete: (a) the predicate precedes the subject (the predicate is before the link verb and both are placed before the subject); (b) both adverbial modifier and predicate are before the subject partial: (a) the object precedes the subject-predicative unit; (b) the auxiliary element of the compound verbal predicate precedes the subject; (c) the predicative precedes the subject; (d) the adverbial modifier or the preposition of a phrasal verb is intentionally placed at the beginning of the sentence; (e) the attribute is placed after the word it modifies (postposition of the attribute). * Note: It is important to draw a line of demarcation between grammatical inversion and stylistic inversion. Stylistic inversion does not change the grammatical type of the syntactical structure. Compare the following: They slid down. Did they slide down? (grammatical inversion) Down they slid. (stylistic inversion) ** Note: The sphere in which all sorts of inversion can be found is colloquial speech. Here it is not so much a stylistic device as the result of spontaneity of speech and the informal character of the latter. 2. Suspense is a deliberate postponement of the completion of the sentence. The theme and the rheme of the sentence are distanced from each other and the new information is withheld, creating the tension of expectation. Technically, suspense is organised with the help of embedded clauses 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. Suspense - is a compositional device which is realized through the separation of the Predicate from the Subject by deliberate introduction between them of a clause or a sentence. Thus the reader's interest is held up. This device is typical of oratoric style with the help of embedded clauses 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. Suspense is a deliberate postponement of the completion of the sentence: “Of all my 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.) Note: 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. 3. Detached constructions. 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). Sometimes one of the secondary members of the sentence is placed so that it seems formally independent of the word it refers to. Being formally independent this secondary member acquires a greater degree of significance and is given prominence by intonation. E.g. She was gone. For good. The punctuation marks used are mainly commas. The word-order is not violated, but secondary members obtain their own stress and intonation. Practically any secondary part may be detached, be it an attribute, apposition, adverbial modifier, or direct/ prepositional object. “She was crazy about you. In the beginning. 4. Attachment: The second part of the utterance is separated by a full stop from the first as if in afterthought: “a lot of mills. And a chemical factory. And a Grammar school. And a war memorial…” 5 .Parenthetic words, phrases and sentences mostly evaluate what is said or supply some kind of additional information. Parenthetic elements comprising additional information are a kind of protest against the linear character of the text. Parenthetic segments perform a number of stylistic functions, such as: (a) the creation of a second plane, or background to the narrative; (b) the creation of a mingling of ‘voices’ of different speech parties (‘polyphony’); (c) focusing on the information in parentheses. Special punctuation marks the usage of parenthesis. It usually includes using dashes or brackets; commas are possible but infrequent. Besides, parentheses are independent enough to function as exclamatory or interrogative segments of declarative sentences. 6. Enumeration is a SD which separates things, properties or actions brought together and forms a chain of grammatically and semantically homogeneous parts of the utterance. e.g. She wasn't sure of anything and more, of him, herself, their friends, her work, her future. 7. Rhetorical questions. Rhetorical question is one that expects no answer. It is asked in order to make a statement rather than to get a reply. It is frequently used in dramatic situation and in publicist style. e.g. What was the good of discontented people who fitted in nowhere? A Rhetorical question is a statement semantically, as it is not meant to be answered directly and is used to attract attention of the readers or speakers to the problem raised. Rhetorical questions are statements expressed in the form of interrogative constructions. Unlike ordinary questions they do not demand any information but serve to express the emotions of the speaker and also to call the attention of listeners. In fact, the speaker knows the answer and often gives it immediately after the question. When it is not given directly, it is inferred, as the positive form of a rhetorical question calls for the negative answer, and the negative form – for the positive. Rhetorical questions make an indispensable part of oratorical speech for – due to intonation or/and punctuation – they draw the attention of the audience to the core information of the utterance. “But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of rivers, who (praise to Heaven) has no young children like him?” (D.) 8. Question in the narrative. Changes the real nature of a question turns it into a stylistic device. A question in the narrative is asked and answered by one and the same person, usually the author. It becomes akin to a parenthetical statement with strong emotional implications. e.g. For what is left the poet here? For Greeks a blush - for Greece a tear. As is seen from these examples the questions asked, unlike rhetorical questions do not contain statements. Question in the narrative is very often used in oratory. This is explained by one of the leading features of oratorical style - to induce the desired reaction to the content of the speech.