Stylistic potential of the parts of speech.

Plan:

1. Types of grammatical transposition.

2. The noun and its stylistic potential.

3. The article and its stylistic potential.

4. The stylistic power of the pronoun.

5. The adjective and its stylistic functions.

6. The verb and its stylistic properties.

7. Affixation and its expressivness.

 

1. Types of grammatical transposition.

The main unit of the morphological level is a morpheme – the smallest meaningful unit which can be singled out in a word. There are two types of morphemes: root morphemes and affix ones. Morphology chiefly deals with forms, functions and meanings of affix morphemes.

Affix morphemes in English are subdivided into word-building and form-building morphemes. In the latter case affixation may be: 1) synthetical (boys, lived, comes, going); 2) analytical (has invited, is invited, does not invite); 3) based on the alteration of the root vowel (write-wrote); 4) suppletive (go-went).

Style is less investigated on the morphological level than on any other one because very many scholars hold the opinion that stylistic connotations appear only when the use of grammatical phenomenon departs from the normative usage and functions on the outskirts or beyond the system of Standard language.

Nevertheless stylistic connotations don’t necessarily mean the violation of the normative speech patterns. They are based on different cases of transposition.

Transposition is the usage of different parts of speech in unusual grammatical meaning which breaks the usual correlation within a grammatical category and is used to express the speaker’s emotions and his attitude to the object of discussion. It is the shift from one grammatical class to another, controversy between the traditional and situational reference on the level of morphology. (I.V.Arnold.)

T.A. Znamenskaya outlines three types of grammatical transposition:

- transposition of a certain grammar form into a new syntactical distri­bution, which produces the effect of contrast (e.g. historical present);

- transposition of both the lexical and grammatical meanings (which takes place when abstract nouns are used in the plural);

- transposition from one word class into another (e.g. in antonomasia a common noun is used as a proper one).

Stylistic potential of the noun can be observed in case of transposi­tion of a noun from one word class (lexico-grammatical category) into another, which creates expressive, emotional, evaluative and sty­listic connotations. English common nouns are traditionally subdivid­ed into several groups:

1) nouns naming individuals (a man, a person, a doctor); 2) nouns naming other living beings — real or imaginary (an­gel, ass, bird, devil); 3) nouns naming objects (a book, a lesson); 4) col­lective nouns denoting a number of things taken together and regarded as a single object (family, crew, company, crowd); 5) collective nouns which are names of multitude (cattle, poultry, police); 6) nouns nam­ing units of measurement (mile, month); 7) material nouns (snow, iron, meat, matter); 8) abstract nouns denoting abstract notions (time), quali­ties or states (kindness, courage, strength), processes or actions (conver­sation, writing).

The names of animals or imaginary creatures when used with regard to people (in colloquial speech) gain emotionally coloured expressive connotations: tender / affectionate (duck, teddy, angel, lamb); ironical (pig, donkey, monkey); highly negative (bookworm, shark, snake, bear, swine, ass, ape, devil). Negative evaluation is even more intensified due to the usage of permanent epithets and emphatic imperative structure: you lazy dog; you filthy swine.

Abstract nouns may be transposed into the class of nouns naming individuals. In this case they are charged with various emotional connotations (ranging from affection to irony or distaste): the chubby little electricity (to refer to a child); the old oddity (an odd old person); he is a disgrace to his family (he is a disgraceful son). I.V. Arnold compares the following synonymous phrases in terms of their expressivity:

1) You are a horrid girl (only lexical meaning contributes to expressiv­ity);

2) You horrid girl (more expressive due to syntactical construction);

3) You horrid little thing (expressivity increased due to depersonification);

4) You little horror (highly expressive as a result of transposition from the class of abstract nouns into the class of nouns naming people).

Another type of transposition is transposition from one part of speech into another (not just between the categories of one and the same part of speech). Thus, adjectives may be transposed into nouns as a result of sub­stantivisation.

In colloquial speech a certain group of adjectives may be transposed into nouns naming people. They are used as forms of address performing the appellative expressive function: Listen, my sweet; Wait a little, lovely.

Adjectives / Participles II describing people's qualities may be substantivised to refer to the groups of people possessing this quality, e.g.: / came here, he said, because I felt it my duty to aid the hurt and the sick (Fast); the rich; the poor; the wounded; the unemployed; schools for the deaf and dumb.

Adjectives denoting abstract qualities when substantivised make the narration more emphatic, dramatic and abstract:

All Europe was in arms, and England would join. The impossible had happened (Aldington);