Lecture No 6. Stylistic syntax

Lecture No 6. Stylistic syntax

General considerations

The object of stylistic analysis on syntactic level is sentence. Within the domain of syntax stylistics deals with the following crucial problems: 1) the stylistic potential of syntactic units of different structural design, semantic characteristics and communicative types; 2) the syntactic synonymy, i.e. the peculiarities of rendering of one and the same logical content by syntactic units with different structure, functional characteristics, expressive colouring and connotations; 3) description of syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices.

Owing to its constructive nature, syntax is considered to have more perceptible stylistic power (when compared with morophological and lexical level) because it embraces the expressive potential of morphology and vocabulary. Syntax is the structural basis of any utterance and text: the process of nomination and metaphorization, logical and figurative, emotional, expressive and poetic colouring of the words, language imagery and symbolism, specific figures of speech, new coinages and at last the individual speaker’s creativity are actualized only on the level of syntax, and, having been melted into a completed unity, can fulfill its communicative purpose. Thus the importance of syntax for stylistic analysis is hard to overestimate. It is syntax that fixes the stylistic aspect of any text. Syntax, alongside with other stylistic elements (phonetic, morphological, lexical) that secure utterance meaning, provide it with additional connotations or expressiveness and contribute to the development of text imagery system, is an efficient mediator of aesthetic delight.

To desplay the stylistic value of syntactic constructions which by their form render the main idea of the text, reflect the type of author’s personal perception and perform a characteralogical stylistic function, let us refer to the following example:

 

Sun in a blaze. Lost its shape. Tide pouring up from London as bright as bottled ale. Full of bubbles and every bubble flashing its own electric torch. Mist breaking into round fat shapes, china white on Dresden blue. Dutch angels by Rubens della Robbia. Big one on top curled up with her knees to her nose like the little marble woman Dobson did for Courtauld. A beauty. Made me jump to think of it. You could have turned it round in your hand. Smooth and neat as a cricket ball. A classic Event (J. Carry).

What is the extract about? It is about a bright sun over the Thames, tide and white clouds against the background of sparkling blue sky. But due to the special syntactic shape the text is loaded with additional expressive and emotional information. It makes the reader to look at the picture from the point of view of the artist and even to identify the artistic trend it is executed in. The general effect is created by short, elliptical or nominal sentences that resemble quick, energetic brushstrokes on a canvas. Writer’s peculiarities of world perception (encoded in the extract– queer, full of unexpected images and reminiscences) rests upon the stylistic function of its syntactic organization.

The leading feature of stylistic function of syntax is that it works almost inconspicuously but at the same time the effect produced is strong and perceptible. Sentence length and structure are the primary and constant factors which influence the stylistic function of syntactic constructions and correlates with the semantic, compositional and expressive properties of a text. To support this statement let us refer to the following examples:

 

I slipped along behind the bar and out through the kitchen in back all the way out. I went clear around the outside of the square and went in through the gate and out onto the dock and got on board (E. Hemingway).

When the shooting started, he had clapped his helmet on his head so hard it banged his head as though he had been hit with a casserole and, in the last lung-aching, leg-dead, mouth-dry, bullet-spatting, bullet-cracking, bullet-singing run up the final slope of the hill after his horse was killed, the helmet had seem to weigh a great amount and to ring his bursting forehead with an iron bang. But he had kept it (E. Hemingway).

I am, he thought, a part of all that I have touched and that has touched me, which, having for me no existence save that I gave to it, became other than itself by being mixed with what I then was, and is now still otherwise, having fused with what I now am, which is itself a cummulation of what I have been becoming (Th. Wolfe).

In the first example the length and structure of the sentences contribute to the rendering the dynamic character of the event. Direction, manner, tempo of the action is expressed not only by the meaning of the verbs slipped, went, got but also by the accumulation of homogeneous adverbial modifiers in both sentences, their parallel distribution which intensifies the utterance and secures its rhythmical arrangement. Therefore the utterance that contains not a single lexical emotive or expressive element is loaded with emotional tension only due to its syntactic structure.

In the second example a short final sentence neigbours with a long initial one that exceeds it in length considerably. This linear arrangement of the utterance creates a specific rhythmical and intonation drop and influences the meaning of the whole extract. It actualizes the cause-and-effect relations that exist between the parts of the utterance: the short sentence mounts the catharsis, the outcome of the emotional, logical or situational strain, which exists in the long one.

The structural complexity of the third example serves as a reflection of complexity and intricacy of character’s thoughts, his intention to grasp the most vitally important things, his need to come to the conclusion. Hence, long complex or compound sentences, being introduced into the structure of a text make the emotive prose sound heavy and ponderous. In such sentences the number of clauses, expletives and detached, absolute or participial constructions may be practically unlimited. English and Ukrainian literatures abound in examples of strings that contain 100, 300 or even more than 500 words. The occurrence of these giants is not at all accidental. The complex syntactic organization of a text always has a definite artistic function. It creates a special subjective modality, produces the effect of chaotic character of narration or perception, and in most cases is a literary attempt to represent the actual stream of consciousness (for example – the works of J. Joyce, J.C. Oates, N. Mailer, W. Faulkner, У. Самчук, Л. Аграновський, etc).

And vice versa, lightness, clarity, transparency and memorability are the indispensable feature of the prose built up of simple (extended or unextended) sentences (with a slight dissemination of complex sentences). Balanced in length and structure, the components of such texts create the perceptible rhythm in emotive prose, which in most cases contributes to the development of its idea and embodied images:

 

Море дедалі втрачало спокій. Чайки знімались із одиноких берегових скель, припадали грудьми до хвилі і плакали над морем. Море потемніло, змінилось. Дрібні хвилі зливались докупи і, мов брили зеленкуватого скла, непомітно підкрадались до берега, падали на пісок і розбивались на білу піну. Під човном клекотіло, кипіло, щумувало, а він підскакував і плигав, немов нісся кудись на білогривих звірах (М. Коцюбинський).

Ellipsis

Ellipsis is an intentional omission of the subject, predicate or both principal parts of a sentence in cases when they are semantically redundant. The meaning of the omitted member can be easily restored from the context.

Elliptical sentences cannot be viewed as stylistic device in direct intercourse, in official or scientific oral discourses because in this sphere of communication they are devoid of any additional pragmatic value. In oral speech the phenomenon of ellipsis is rather norm than a special stylistic device. A speaker uses elliptical sentences in order to save needless efforts, to spare time and language means.

Elliptical sentences acquire expressiveness when they are used in emotive prose (or sometimes in poetry) as a means of imitating real colloquial speech, live talk or as a means of exposing character’s emotions:

 

Augustus. Hullo! Who are you?

The clerk. The stuff.

Augustus. You the stuff! What do you mean, man? Where are the others?

The clerk. At the front (B.Show).

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

Ниє-омліває материне серце. А тут уже й ніч наступає, непроглядна темнота надходить. Марина ні жива ні мертва. Коли чує – щось лізе в хату, ледве лізе...

- Ти, дочко?

- Я, мамо!

- Де ж це ти була так довго? Де барилася?

- Світіть, мамо, світло. Благодать Божа!

- Яка благодать? (Панас Мирний).

Nominative sentences

Nominative (or nominal) sentence is a one-member sentence, which kernel component is expressed by a noun or noun-like element (gerund, numeral). The surface structures of nominative sentences in English and Ukrainian are common – the structural form of nominative sentences can be either extended or expanded. The former consists of two or more nominal components connected both syndetically and asyndetically. Expanded nominal sentence consists of two or more nominal components connected by means of co-ordinate conjunctions:

 

An aching business (J. Galsworthy).

The gloomy dockside and the grey river; the bustle with baggage, and the crowded tender (J. Galsworthy).

Високий ранок, камінь не нагрітий.

Сочистий кущ і поруч синя тінь.

Вузьке від спеки річкове корито.

Уламки скель. Акварилева рінь (Є Маланюк).

The structural and semantic diversity of nominative sentences as well as their position and distribution within a certain context impart rather significant stylistic value to them. A sequence of nominative sentences makes for the dynamic description of the events, depiction of the time of the action, the place, the attendant circumstances, its participants, etc. Or on the contrary, the dissemination of nominative sentences into the context breaks the even flow of narration, highlights the very minute changes in the depicted situation, character’s mood, thoughts, recollections and emotions. A nominative sentence in final position sums up (logically or emotionally) the information of the passage. A single nominal sentence in the initial position introduces the topic of the passage, catches reader’s attention, recalls certain ideas and makes them vivid, shape and specifies the thing, event, phenomenon:

 

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 ruins (Ch. Dickens).

Батько... ниюча рана. І характер, і мова, і чорний чуб у нього від батька, або, точніше, без батька. У тридцять сьомім чорний ворон забрав батька і повів сибірськими етапами. І нічого-нічого, тільки – син “ворога народу”...

Specific stylistic function is attributed to other structural and semantic types of one-member sentences: imperative, exclamatory, infinitival, vocative and one-word (or quasi) sentences. They are frequently resorted to in poetry and emotive prose as an efficient means of colloquial pastiche (стилізації під розмовне мовлення):

 

Keep aside! Keep aside! Pass on, pass on! (M.R. Anard).

Thieves! Fire! How funny. To think of it! (S. Maugham).

Damn your money (S. Maugham).

To be or not to be? (W. Shakespeare).

“Do you love me?” – “Uh huh” (E. Hemingway).

І Ольга усміхнулась:

- Гаразд.

- Ото народу збереться.

- Еге... (І. Микитенко).

Ні! Їй-богу ж ні (І. Кочерга).

–Чолом, панове!

–Чолом, пане Максиме (П. Панч).

Repetition

Repetition is recurrence of the same word, word combination, phrase for two or more times in close succession. Skillfully used and justified repetition never creates the redundancy of information. On the contrary, the additional stylistic meanings that arise as a result of repetition are indispensable elements of emotional and artistic impact upon the reader or listener. Repetition is powerful means of emphasis, besides it adds rhythm and balance to the utterance.

According to the place which the repeated word occupies in the sentence or text, repetition is classified into several groups.

Ordinary repetition. In ordinary repetition the repeated element has no definite place in the utterance.

 

I wake up and I’m alone and I walk round Warley and I am alone; and I talk with people and I am alone and I look at his face when I’m home and it’s dead (J. Braine).

The reiterated element of the utterance may be supported by introduction of other elements which specify and extend its meaning:

 

I don’t think Art heard. Pain, even slight pain, tends to isolate. Pain such as he had to suffer, cuts the last links with society (S. Chaplin).

Successive repetition. Successive repetition is a string of closely following each other reiterated units. This is the most emphatic type of repetition, which signifies the peak of speaker’s emotions, or imparts the greatest logical significance to the repeated element.

She was screaming high a shrill scream that rose in the air incisively like a gull’s shriek. “Put it back, put it back, put it back!” the scream seemed to say (W. Sansom).

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. Braine).

Шкода й розмови: святої любови

Силою в серце не можна вложить.

Поки шовкові чорнітимуть брови, -

Дайте-бо жить мені, дайте-бо жить (К. Білиловський).

Anaphora. Anaphora is the repetition of elements at the beginning of each consecutive syntactic structure:

 

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

Дерева мене чекають.

І падає листя на стежку,

І падають зорі в долоні,

І падає сон у траву (І. Драч).

The main stylistic function of anaphora is to create a background for nonrepeated units of the utterance or the text, to give it logical and/or emotional emphasis and to underline its novelty.

 

Epiphora. Epiphora is the repetition of the final elements of each successive utterance.

 

She stopped and seemed to catch the distant sound of knocking. Abandoning the traveler, 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. Bennett).

The main stylistic function of epiphora is to foreground the final elements of the utterances.

 

Framing. In framing the initial element of the utterance is repeated at the end of the utterance. Thus the syntactic structure resembles a kind of a “frame”: between the repeated words or word combinations there comes a middle part that explains and clarifies the idea. Framing has several stylistic functions. It is capable of rendering a wide score of human emotions and modal meanings: doubt, delight, impatience, worry, irritation, and others, as, for example in such widely used expressions Я так і знав, що ти запізнишся, я так і знав! and the like.

In most cases framing is aimed at foregrounding (logically or emotionally) of the repeated element, so by the time it is used the second time its semantics is concretized and specified:

Nothing ever happened in that little town, left behind by the advance of civilization, nothing (S. Maugham).

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

Catch repetition (anadiplosis) – (підхват). In catch repetition the end of one clause or sentence is repeated at the beginning of the following one.

 

Chain repetition (ланцюговий повтор). Chain repetition presents several anadiploses:

 

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

The stylistic function of anadiplosis and chain repetition is to specify the semantics of the repeated elements and to create the effect of logical reasoning.

Thus, as it has already been pointed out, repetition is an expressive means of language used for different purposes.

From the functional point of view, repetition, first of all, is one of the devices having its origin in the emotive language. Repetition in this respect is to be seen as the exposition of excitement, the expression of a feeling being brought to its highest tension. Secondly, when used as a stylistic device of logical language, repetition acquires quite different functions. It does not aim at making a direct emotional impact. On the contrary, the stylistic device of repetition aims at logical emphasis, an emphasis necessary to fix the attention of the reader on the 'key-word of the utterance'. And thirdly, repetition is rhythmical and intonation device having a purely aesthetic aim.

From the semantic point of view, any repetition of a language unit will inevitably cause some slight modification of meaning.

Sometimes a writer may use different compositional patterns of repetition in one utterance.

 

Enumeration

Enumeration is a stylistic device by which separate things, objects, phenomena, properties, actions are named one by one so that they produce a chain of syntactically homogeneous but semantically remote elements. Due to the common syntactic links and equal syntactic status the enumerated elements are forced to display some kind of semantic homogeneity, remote though it may seem. For example:

 

Fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound, for he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros, cactus-hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening plains, singing birds in tiny cages, water sellers, sunsets, melons, males, great churches, ' pictures and swimming grey-brown mountains of a fascinating land (J. Galsworthy).

The cited extract depicts scenery through a tourist's eyes. The enumeration here includes various elements which can be approximately grouped in the following semantic fields:

1 ) donkeys, mules, crowing cocks, goats, singing birds;

2) priests, beggars, children, water sellers;

3) villages, patios, cactus-hedges, churches, tumbling bells, sombreros, pictures;

4) sunsets, swimming grey-brown mountains, greening plains, olive-trees, melons.

Galsworthy found it necessary to arrange them not according to logical semantic centres, but in some other order; in one which, apparently, would suggest the rapidly changing impressions of a tourist and therefore become striking. This heterogeneous enumeration gives one an insight into the mind of the observer, into the great variety of miscellaneous objects which caught his eye; it gives an idea of the progress of his travels and the most memorable features of the land.

Similar stylistic effect is created in the following extract of the famous Ukrainian satirist O. Vyshnia. The laws of logical and semantic combinability of the enumerated elements being violated, the perceptible humorous effect emerges:

 

Захряс майдан... захряс гарбами, возами, бідами, кіньми, коровами, вівцями, волами, телятами, горшками, мисками, курми, вовною, лантухами, хмелем, смушками, матерією, чобітьми, цукерками, пряниками, квасом, пивом, руською гіркою, гребінками, косами, шкірами, ременем, чавунами, прядивом, хустками, полотном, дьогтем, гасом, дранками, сорочками, спідницями, килимами, щетиною, діжками, рогами, шайками, воском, медом, малясом, таранею, оселедцями, ходами, склом, яйцями, запасками, плахтами, пирогами, салом, м’ясом, ковбасою, смаженою рибою, ряднами, скринями, гвіздками, молотками, свинями, крамарями, циганами, баришниками, людьми, дітьми і сліпцями... І все це ворушиться, дихає, курить, кричить, лається, мукає, мекає, ірже, ігікає, ремигає, позіхає, хреститься, божиться, матюкається, заприсягається, пахне, смердить, воняє, кудкудакає, квокче, смалить одне одного поруках, грає на гармонію, на скрипку, причитує, п’є квас, їсть тараню, од ригує, ікає, “будькає”, лускає насіння і крутиться на каруселі... А над усим оцим голоблі, голоблі (О. Вишня).

The range of stylistic function of enumeration is versatile. The primary one, as in most of the stylistic devices, is to intensify the utterance. Enumeration adds logical and emotional emphasis to the words which semantically fall out of the string of homogeneous elements and, therefore, become foregrounded, as in the following extract:

 

Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and his sole mourner (Ch. Dickens).

The enumeration here is heterogeneous: the legal terms placed in a string with such words as friend and mourner result in a kind of clash, a thing typical of any stylistic device. Here there is a clash between terminological vocabulary and common neutral words. In addition there is a clash of concepts: friend and mourner by force of enumeration are equal in significance to the business office of executor, administrator, etc. and also to that of legatee.

Enumeration can be employed for the display of subjective evaluation of facts, things, situations:

 

There was a great deal of confusion and laughter and noise, the noise of orders and counter-orders, of knives and forks, of corks and glass-stoppers (J. Joyce).

З гори тієї, що стоїть висока,

В кільці річок і копаних канав,

Лубенський родич краківського Смока

У нашу землю кігті увігнав.

Загарбав край, неначе відумерщину,

І брав за все – живе і неживе.

За дим, за торг, ставщину, сухомельщину,

Спасне, гребельне, з воза, рогове.

Обклав податком вулики, броварні,

Степи, луги, левади за посів.

В монастирях, обладнаних під псарні,

Святі ченці удержували псів... (Л. Костенко).

Прицокало, прибилось, притекло

Припало, пригорнулось, причинилось,

Заплакало – і зникло, утекло

Чорняве полум’я з печальними очима (М. Вінграновський).

In poetic discourse enumeration is often aimed at producing solemn, elevated effect. Each subsequent element of the string intensifies the preceding one. Being brought together the elements of enumeration contribute to the developing of images, increase the emotional and aesthetic impact on the reader. Enumeration is often combined with climax (anticlimax), hyperbole. Enumeration raises the expressiveness of speech, makes it dynamic and informative.

Syntactic tautology

Syntactic tautology is repetition of semantically and grammatically similar language units within a sentence which results in the redundancy of information:

 

It was a clear starry night, and not a cloud was to be seen.

Ми працювали мовчки, без слів.

 

In oral colloquial discourse tautological repetition may be caused by different psychological reasons (speaker’s excitement, fright, petrification, hesitation, grief, etc.) or by carelessness of speech, slipshod organization of the utterance, low cultural level of the speaker:

Well, Judge Thatcher, he took it and put it out of interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day a piece all the round. The widow Douglas, she took me for her son (M. Twain).

In some cases the tautology is viewed as a drawback of speech, since the unnecessary repetition of the same statement, repetition of the same word or expression of the same idea or statement in other words do not favour the stylistic value of the utterance and should be avoided. For example, as in the following incorrect Ukrainian phrases вільна вакансія, пам’ятний сувенір, глухий тупик, захисний імунітет, головний лейтмотив, etc

Generally speaking, involuntary tautology has little to do with stylistic. It becomes stylistically relevant when is used in writing with the aim of intensification of some semantic shades of the described notions, of creating different additional connotations, as the means of humour:

 

Why don’t you shut your great big old gob? You poor bloody old fool (J. Osborn).

His “Noontide Peace”, a study of two dun cows under a walnut tree, was followed by “A midday Sanctuary”. A study of a walnut tree with tow dun cows under it (B. Malamud).

Мати любила його без пам’яті, тряслась над ним і у всім волила його волю (І. Франко).

One more type of tautological repetition consists in the use of more lexical units in a sentence than it is necessary to express the meaning. In other words it is a reduplication of semantically close words, as in тишком-нишком, ждати-чекати, люба-мила, цілющий живущий, німий-мовчазний, думати-гадати, говорити-балакати, з діда-прадіда, lovey-dovey, clitter-clatter, goody-goody, hush-hush, etc.

Repetition of this type is rooted in the tradition of folklore and is characteristic feature of nursery rhymes. In modern writing it performs the function of colloquial and folk stylization.

 

Polysyndeton

The arrangement of sentence members, the completeness of its structure necessarily involves various types of connection between sentence components and between sentences. Polysyndeton is stylistically motivated deliberate repetition of conjunctions or prepositions:

 

The raisins and almonds and figs and apples and oranges and chocolates and sweets were now passed about the table (J. Joyce).

Polysyndeton performs both formal and semantic function in the utterance. First of all, it shapes the rhythmical contour of the utterance and has a definite aesthetic impact on the reader or listener. Consequently it is the most frequent way to secure melody and rhyme in poetry or to impart rhythm, emotional tension and solemnity to emotive prose:

And then you came with those mournful lips.

And with you came the whole of the world’s tears,

And all the trouble of her labouring ships,

And all the trouble of her myriad years (J. Yeats).

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife (E. Hemingway).

Secondly, polysyndeton imparts syntactic independence and logical significance to the sentence components joined by the common conjunction: the repetition of the conjunction unites these components and simultaneously singles out each of them and actualizes their meanings.

Не минай з погордою

І не смійсь дитя!

Може в тім осміянім

Сенс твого життя.

Може в тім зневаженім

Твого щастя карб,

Може в тім погордженім

Є любові скарб.

Може сміх твій нинішній,

Срібний та дзвінкий,

Стане в твоїй пам’яті

За докір гіркий (І. Франко).

Thus polysyndeton is one of the efficient means of logical and communicative allocation of the most important information.

 

Inversion

Inversion is a syntactic phenomenon of the deliberate changing of word order in the initial sentence model. Word order is a crucial syntactical problem in many languages. In English it has peculiarities which have been caused by the concrete and specific way the language has developed. The English language has developed a fixed word order which in the great majority of cases shows without fails what is the Subject of the sentence. This fixed word order is Subject— Verb (Predicate) — Object (S—P—O).

This predominance of fixed word order makes conspicuous any change in the structure of the sentence and inevitably calls forth a modification in the stylistic meanings.

There are two types of inversion: grammatical and stylistic. Grammatical inversion is aimed at the change of the communicative type of sentence and has no stylistic value.

Stylistic inversion is aimed at logical or emotional intensification of a certain sentence element. It attaches the additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the utterance. It is always semantically and stylistically motivated:

 

Talent Mr. Micawber has; capital Mr. Micawber has not (Ch. Dickens).

Rude am I in my speech... (W.Shakespeare).

 

Of his own class he saw nothing (J. London).

 

Безбожний царю, творче зла,

Правди гонителю жестокий (Т. Шевченко).

Detachment

A specific arrangement of sentence members is observed in detachment. Detachment (відокремлення) is a stylistic device based on singling out structurally and semantically a secondary member of the sentence with the help of punctuation: dashes, commas or even a full stop. When placed in a certain syntactic position, a detached sentence component may seem formally independent of the words it refers to, though the word order may not be violated and semantic connections between the elements remain strong:

 

He had been nearly killed, ingloriously, in a jeep accident (I. Show).

I have to beg you for money. Daily (S. Lewis).

There was a world of anticipation in her voice and of confidence too, as she walked past me on to the terrace (D. du Maurier).

Горіли свічки, сяяли в рушниках ікони...Але це відійшло, розтануло разом з ладанними димами, зостався...лише цей довершений архітектурний витвір, оця симфонія пластики (О. Гончар).

Due to the detachment the adverbial modifiers ingloriously and daily and attributive construction of confidence in the English examples and the subject оця симфонія пластики in the Ukrainian one have become foregrounded into the reader’s focus of attention.

Stylistic function of detachment is determined by the syntactic role of the isolated element, its place in the sentence, general linguistic and stylistic context of the utterance.

Detachment is aimed at foregrounding of the isolated sentence element which according to author’s standpoint acquires greater emotional or logical importance. Detachment is used in descriptive and narrative discourses in order to make a written text akin to the spoken one, live and emotionally charged. Detachment is one of the most powerful means of rendering speaker’s emotions or mirroring character’s emotional /psychological state. It is used in descriptions of nature, events, situations in order to impress the reader and to create the presence effect:

Володькові очі все ширшають і ширшають, на щоках з’явились рум’янці. Щось дуже сильне тягне його туди. Так хотілося б, так дуже хотілося б... Бачити. Чути. Знати (У. Самчук).

Марта ревнувала Антона. Уперто, затаєнно, сильно, до всіх і до всього (М. Коцюбинський).

 

Chiasmus

Chiasmus belongs to the group of stylistic devices based on the similarity of a syntactical pattern in two successive sentences or coordinate parts of a sentence, but it has a cross order of words and phrases. The structure of two successive sentences or parts of a sentence may be described as reversed parallel construction, the word order of one of the sentences being inverted as compared with that of the other, as in:

Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on the jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is onlyy as sound as the men who make it up (H. Lee).

Успіх несе радість. Радість несе успіх.

Не говори, що знаєш, а знай, що говориш.

Like parallel construction, chiasmus contributes to the rhythmical quality of the utterance. It is sometimes used to break the monotony of parallel constructions. But whatever the purpose of chiasmus, it will always bring in some new shade of meaning or additional emphasis on some portion of the second part. It always aims at the redistribution of the information of the utterance in such a way that the second part of chiasmus leads to the reinterpretation of the first part meaning:

 

In Malta the news reached us – or, rather, we reached the news – that the Boers have invaded Natal, and that England is at war (B. Show).

 

Parcelation

Parcelation (парцеляція) is a deliberate split of one single sentence into two (or more) parts, separated by a full stop or its equivalent. Parcelling is stylistic device based on the transposition of the meaning of grammatical means of connection between parts of a sentence. Both parts of the sentence remain semantically and logically connected. But being structurally independent, they acquire greater communicative value and impart expressiveness to the whole utterance:

They stood around him. Talking (D. White).

With that parhaps in mind, he broke away briefly, and ran into the planting shop. And returned with a rope, or coil of little cord (D. White).

Коло неї Гафійка. Наче молода щепа з панського саду (М. Коцюбинський).

The stylistic function of parcelation is similar to the function of detachment: it reflects the atmosphere of unofficial communication and spontaneous character of speech, the speaker’s inner state of mind, it makes the information more concrete and detailed. But parceling and detachment should not be confused. In the case of parceling the word order is not changed, while in detachment the secondary sentence member is isolated and often placed at the end of the sentence, which influence the word order. For example, the sentence They would appear with soup. Thin and watery is detachment. The separated part Thin and watery is separated attribute placed after the noun soup it describes. The sentence He passed two or three places with telephones, and although he hesitated before each one, he did not go in. Because there was no one in the whole city he wanted to see that night (I. Show) is parcelation.

 

Attachment

The neat stylistic device based on a peculiar type of connection of sentence parts or sentences in a text is attachment or gap-sentence link (приєднання). In the case of attachment this connection is not immediately apparent and it requires a certain mental effort to grasp the interrelation between the parts of the utterance, in other words, to bridge the semantic gap. Here is an example:

 

Prison is where she belongs. And my husband agrees one thousand per cent (T. Capote).

In this sentence the second part, which is hooked on to the first by the conjunction and, seems to be a kind of afterthought deliberately brought by the author into the foregrounded opening position.

Attachment creates a semantic gap wider or narrower as the case may be. Sometimes the gap is so wide that it requires a deep supralinear semantic analysis to get at the implied meaning. While maintaining the unity of the utterance syntactically the author leaves the interpretation of the link between the two sentences to the mind of the reader:

 

The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family, this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and—the sniff (J. Galsworthy).

She and that fellow ought to be the sufferers, and they were in Italy (J. Galsworthy).

Rhetoric question

Rhetoric question is an emotional statement or negation expressed in the form of a question. Rhetoric question does not require any answer or demand any information but is used to emphasize the idea, to render speaker’s emotions or to call the attention of the listener (reader) to the focus of the utterance. In fact the communicative function of a rhetoric question is not to ask for unknown but to involve the readers into the discussion or emotional experience, give them a clue and make them to arrive at the conclusion themselves.

 

How can what an Englishmen believes be a heresy? It is a contradiction in terms (B. Show).

 

Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire (W. Shakespeare).

Rhetoric questions make an indispensable part of emotive prose, poetry and oratorical and publicistic style. They elevate the style of the utterance, serve as powerful means of emotional inducement, or on the contrary are effective tools of irony, sarcasm and derision:

 

Хто може випити Дніпро,

Хто властен виплескати море,

Хто наше злото-серебро

Плугами кривди переоре,

Хто серця чистого добро

Злобою чорною поборе? (М. Рильський)

But who bothers to sort out the conflicting economic, social and other motives here and to mitigate accordingly? Or to study the economics of the social arrangement by which they are so sharply checked? Or cares whether such young fellows become embittered? (Th. Dreiser).

Alongside with rhetoric questions there are other types of the sentence meaning transposition. In colloquial style exclamations, orders, requests, etc. can be shaped as emphatic questions. Thus such utterances as

 

Aren’t you ashamed of yourself!

Тобі не соромно?

Wasn’t it a marvelous trip!

I wonder whether you would mind opening the door?

What on earth are you doing?

Як я втомився!

And that’s supposed to be cultured?

are considered stylistically marked because they render the same meaning more expressively than the neutral utterances do. In some cases the syntactic transposition can be reinforced by lexical or morphological transposition (often with ironic, sarcastic or humorous connotations) as in the following examples:

 

“Lower it gently, it’s work of art” – “I’ll work-of-art you!” (A. Wesker).

There is a point of no return unremarked at the time in most men lives (Gr. Greene. The Comedians).

The variety of syntactic transposition able to increase the expressiveness of an utterance is practically unlimited. Most men of letters use syntactic transposition as a potential tool to create the lively atmosphere of speech, to express humour, irony, satire, to expose their own worldview or attitude towards the characters and situation of speech, etc.

Conclusion

Thus the stylistic devices on the level of syntax is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading him or her towards considering a topic from a different perspective. While syntactic stylistic devices may be used to evoke an emotional response in the audience, there are other reasons to use them. Their goal is to persuade towards a particular course of action or a frame of ideas perception, so appropriate syntactic stylistic devices are used to construct sentences designed both to make the audience receptive through emotional changes and to provide a rational argumentation. From this point of view the devices presented in this lecture generally fall into three categories: those involving emphasis, association, clarification, and focus; those involving physical organization, transition, and disposition or arrangement; and those involving decoration and variety. Sometimes a given device or trope will fall mainly into a single category; but more often the effects of a particular device are multiple, and a single one may operate in all three categories. Parallelism, for instance, helps to order, clarify, emphasize, contribute to beautify of a thought, etc.

In this respect it is worth answering the question of the value of syntactic devices in particular and the tropes or figures of speech in general. Metaphor and metonymy, irony and hyperbole, chiasmus and antithethis -- learning all the intricate terms can be a real challenge. Learning how to recognize the figures in our reading and apply them in our writing can be even harder. So why should we even bother?

Over a century ago, a popular Canadian novelist and professor of rhetoric, James De Mille, offered several good reasons for studying the figures of speech. Though we might word them a bit differently today, the points he made in 1878 still hold true.

Figures of speech are of such importance that they must always occupy a prominent place in every treatise on style or criticism. Though differing in special character or effects, they all have one thing in common, and that is, they contribute beyond anything else to the embellishment of style. Some create a picture before the mind; others gratify the sense of proportion; others adorn the subject by contrasting it with some other which is like or unlike; and thus in various ways they appeal to the aesthetical sensibilities.

They contribute to perspicuity, by the power which many of them have of throwing fresh light upon a subject by presenting it in a new and unexpected form. They are used to illustrate a subject, which thus gains a clearness that could be given in no other way. They add to the persuasiveness of style. They give variety to it, by enabling the author to change his form of expression at will. Thus a perpetual freshness and vivacity is the result, together with an attractive brilliancy. Old thoughts, which have lost their force through familiarity, may thus be rendered striking by assuming a novel shape, under which they have all the force of an original statement.

In the whole world of literature, both ancient and modern, figures of speech occupy a foremost place. The most famous passages of poetry--epic, lyric, and dramatic--the noblest strains of eloquence, the most vivid descriptions, all exhibit their presence and effective force. Not the least sign of their power may be perceived in the common language of every-day life. Veriour stylistic devices are indispensable in eager, animated conversation where they always indicate vivacity or energy. This fact shows that while art and elaboration can make the highest use offigurative language, nature also resorts to it; and as nature has invented it, so she prompts its use and shows its effectiveness.

 

Lecture No 6. Stylistic syntax

General considerations

The object of stylistic analysis on syntactic level is sentence. Within the domain of syntax stylistics deals with the following crucial problems: 1) the stylistic potential of syntactic units of different structural design, semantic characteristics and communicative types; 2) the syntactic synonymy, i.e. the peculiarities of rendering of one and the same logical content by syntactic units with different structure, functional characteristics, expressive colouring and connotations; 3) description of syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices.

Owing to its constructive nature, syntax is considered to have more perceptible stylistic power (when compared with morophological and lexical level) because it embraces the expressive potential of morphology and vocabulary. Syntax is the structural basis of any utterance and text: the process of nomination and metaphorization, logical and figurative, emotional, expressive and poetic colouring of the words, language imagery and symbolism, specific figures of speech, new coinages and at last the individual speaker’s creativity are actualized only on the level of syntax, and, having been melted into a completed unity, can fulfill its communicative purpose. Thus the importance of syntax for stylistic analysis is hard to overestimate. It is syntax that fixes the stylistic aspect of any text. Syntax, alongside with other stylistic elements (phonetic, morphological, lexical) that secure utterance meaning, provide it with additional connotations or expressiveness and contribute to the development of text imagery system, is an efficient mediator of aesthetic delight.

To desplay the stylistic value of syntactic constructions which by their form render the main idea of the text, reflect the type of author’s personal perception and perform a characteralogical stylistic function, let us refer to the following example:

 

Sun in a blaze. Lost its shape. Tide pouring up from London as bright as bottled ale. Full of bubbles and every bubble flashing its own electric torch. Mist breaking into round fat shapes, china white on Dresden blue. Dutch angels by Rubens della Robbia. Big one on top curled up with her knees to her nose like the little marble woman Dobson did for Courtauld. A beauty. Made me jump to think of it. You could have turned it round in your hand. Smooth and neat as a cricket ball. A classic Event (J. Carry).

What is the extract about? It is about a bright sun over the Thames, tide and white clouds against the background of sparkling blue sky. But due to the special syntactic shape the text is loaded with additional expressive and emotional information. It makes the reader to look at the picture from the point of view of the artist and even to identify the artistic trend it is executed in. The general effect is created by short, elliptical or nominal sentences that resemble quick, energetic brushstrokes on a canvas. Writer’s peculiarities of world perception (encoded in the extract– queer, full of unexpected images and reminiscences) rests upon the stylistic function of its syntactic organization.

The leading feature of stylistic function of syntax is that it works almost inconspicuously but at the same time the effect produced is strong and perceptible. Sentence length and structure are the primary and constant factors which influence the stylistic function of syntactic constructions and correlates with the semantic, compositional and expressive properties of a text. To support this statement let us refer to the following examples:

 

I slipped along behind the bar and out through the kitchen in back all the way out. I went clear around the outside of the square and went in through the gate and out onto the dock and got on board (E. Hemingway).

When the shooting started, he had clapped his helmet on his head so hard it banged his head as though he had been hit with a casserole and, in the last lung-aching, leg-dead, mouth-dry, bullet-spatting, bullet-cracking, bullet-singing run up the final slope of the hill after his horse was killed, the helmet had seem to weigh a great amount and to ring his bursting forehead with an iron bang. But he had kept it (E. Hemingway).

I am, he thought, a part of all that I have touched and that has touched me, which, having for me no existence save that I gave to it, became other than itself by being mixed with what I then was, and is now still otherwise, having fused with what I now am, which is itself a cummulation of what I have been becoming (Th. Wolfe).

In the first example the length and structure of the sentences contribute to the rendering the dynamic character of the event. Direction, manner, tempo of the action is expressed not only by the meaning of the verbs slipped, went, got but also by the accumulation of homogeneous adverbial modifiers in both sentences, their parallel distribution which intensifies the utterance and secures its rhythmical arrangement. Therefore the utterance that contains not a single lexical emotive or expressive element is loaded with emotional tension only due to its syntactic structure.

In the second example a short final sentence neigbours with a long initial one that exceeds it in length considerably. This linear arrangement of the utterance creates a specific rhythmical and intonation drop and influences the meaning of the whole extract. It actualizes the cause-and-effect relations that exist between the parts of the utterance: the short sentence mounts the catharsis, the outcome of the emotional, logical or situational strain, which exists in the long one.

The structural complexity of the third example serves as a reflection of complexity and intricacy of character’s thoughts, his intention to grasp the most vitally important things, his need to come to the conclusion. Hence, long complex or compound sentences, being introduced into the structure of a text make the emotive prose sound heavy and ponderous. In such sentences the number of clauses, expletives and detached, absolute or participial constructions may be practically unlimited. English and Ukrainian literatures abound in examples of strings that contain 100, 300 or even more than 500 words. The occurrence of these giants is not at all accidental. The complex syntactic organization of a text always has a definite artistic function. It creates a special subjective modality, produces the effect of chaotic character of narration or perception, and in most cases is a literary attempt to represent the actual stream of consciousness (for example – the works of J. Joyce, J.C. Oates, N. Mailer, W. Faulkner, У. Самчук, Л. Аграновський, etc).

And vice versa, lightness, clarity, transparency and memorability are the indispensable feature of the prose built up of simple (extended or unextended) sentences (with a slight dissemination of complex sentences). Balanced in length and structure, the components of such texts create the perceptible rhythm in emotive prose, which in most cases contributes to the development of its idea and embodied images:

 

Море дедалі втрачало спокій. Чайки знімались із одиноких берегових скель, припадали грудьми до хвилі і плакали над морем. Море потемніло, змінилось. Дрібні хвилі зливались докупи і, мов брили зеленкуватого скла, непомітно підкрадались до берега, падали на пісок і розбивались на білу піну. Під човном клекотіло, кипіло, щумувало, а він підскакував і плигав, немов нісся кудись на білогривих звірах (М. Коцюбинський).