Morphological stylistic means (the adjective, the verb)

MORPHOLOGY is a branch of linguistics that studies the form and structure of words, the rules of word formation; as well as parts of speech, their categories and forms. Morphological stylistics primarily investigates the cases of transposition.

Transposition can be defined as a the typical grammatical valency of a word that consists in the unusual use of the grammatical forms and categories of parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs) changing their grammatical meaning. Moreover, frequently transposition leads to the change in the semantic meaning of a word too.

The stylistic function of the adjective.

The only grammatical category of the English adjective today is that of degrees of comparison (positive – comparative – superlative). Only qualitative and quantitative adjectives can form the degrees of comparison. The resort to other adjectives leads to transposition.

Violation of the rules of forming degrees of comparison results in transposition too. 

E.g. the strangest, the cunningest, the willingest our Earth ever had. - add expressiveness to the utterance.

1)A littler thing.

2)The indef article before the superlative degree makes the utterance more emotive and it shows an indefinitely high degree of some feature.(a most exiting).

3) more golden – golden is not qualitative and quantitative so theres no degree of comparison.

4)The use of comparative or superlative forms with other parts of speech may also convey a humorous colouring. E.g. He was the most married man I've ever met. She is a sweetest old lady.- more emotive Transferred (metaphorical) epithets expressed by adjectives are also cases of transposition. Here belong personifying epithets that traditionally characterize people but are used with inanimate objects or abstract notions. Their stylistic function often consists in conveying negative or ironical connotations.

The stylistic function of the verb and its categories.

Transposition in verb categories (tense, aspect, voice, etc.) may also impart stylistically coloured expressiveness to the utterance.

The present tense forms, being temporarily indefinite , may be used instead of the past tense forms, i.e. express past actions.

 E.g. And there opens the door and in he comes.- ‘dramatic’ or ‘historical present’,artistic illusion of reality and visibility.

The Present Indefinite referred to the future often renders determination.

Continuous forms do not always express continuity of the action and are frequently used instead of the common aspect forms to convey the speaker's state of mind, his mood, his intentions or feelings (conviction, determination, persistence, impatience, irritation, surprise, indignation, disapproval, etc.). Verbs of physical and mental perceptiondo not regularly have continuous forms. When they do, however, we observe a highly emphatic structure.

The passive voice of the verb when viewed from a stylistic angle may demonstrate such functions as extreme generalisation and depersonalization.

The communicative aspect of modal verbs is of particular interest to stylistics as they render a wide range of emotions.

The use of the auxiliary do in affirmative sentences is a notable emphatic device.

Completely ‘ungrammatical’ and thus showing through the speech the ‘low’ social status of the speaker (and acquiring a functional stylistic meaning) are the following forms of ‘faulty grammar’: -the use of the singular instead of the plural and vice versa, -the attempts ‘to regularize irregular verbs’ by analogy, -the omission of an auxiliary verb in perfect forms.

Archaic ‘dost’ ‘hast” – reflect dialectal speech or highly bookish.

Classification of lexical stylistic devices

The problem of classification of tropes has existed for centuries going back to antique schools of rhetoric. But the majority of scholars have not been interested in presenting tropes as a generalized system. Most authors propose purely subjective classifications.

I.R. Galperin's classification of lexical stylistic devices is based on the 3 following criteria:

Group 1. Interaction of different types of lexical meaning:

-Dictionary (logical, literal) and contextual (figurative) meanings:

Metaphor, Metonymy, Irony, synecdoche, personification.

-Primary and derivative logical meanings (of a polysemantic word):

Zeugma, Pun.

-Logical and emotive meanings:

Oxymoron, Epithet.

-Logical and nominative meanings:

Antonomasia.

Group 2. Intensification of a feature:

Hyperbole (intensification of quantity, size, emotions, etc.),

Simile (intensification of affinity),

Periphrasis (intensification of an inherent property).

Group 3. Peculiar use of set expressions (interplay of their primary and contextual meanings, mainly when decomposed):

Clichés, Proverbs, Epigrams, Quotations, Allusions, Decomposition of set phrases.

Lexical stylistic devices are also classified according to the degree of originality into trite and genuine. 

Genuine devices are original, full of imagery.

Trite devices are ready-made, fixed in dictionaries clichés. Imagery seems faded there.

Such cases are mainly dealt with in lexicology.

E.g. a root of the quarrel (trite metaphor).

Tropes: zeugma and pun

Zeugmais the blending together of two or more semantically incompatible word groups, having an identical lexical item (usu. a polysemantic word), into a single construction where this item is used only once.

E.g. He took my advice and my wallet.

In the resultant cluster the identical lexical item is in the same grammatical (syntactical) but different semantic relations with the adjacent units, which relate to semantic spheres inconsistent with each other.

Thus, without being repeated the lexical unit is used in a literal and in a transferred meaning.

E.g. With tears in her eyes and a Gucci bag she appeared at the door of his apartment.   

Function. The effect produced by zeugmatic combinations is humorous or ironical.

Pun– the use of a word in such a manner as to bring out different meanings or applications of one polysemantic word,  – or the use of words alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning (homophones, paronyms), often with humorous intent.

It is also called wordplay, play on words, paronomasia. Alongside the English term 'pun', the international (originally French) term calembour is current.

E.g. Seven days without water make one weak. (homophones).

Function. The creation of a jocular atmosphere caused by the intentional mistreatment of the meaning of the lexical unit either by the speaker.

The majority of jokes are based on pun.

The distinction between zeugma and pun

Both zeugma and pun are based on polysemy and create a humorous effect.

The distinguishing feature is mainly a structuralone as

-zeugma is always a structure with two adjacent elements linked with the central element which is used only once; while

-pun 1) is more independent as it needs a broader (than a structure) context for its decoding and there need not necessarily be a word in the sentence to which the pun-word refers; 2) pun-words often recur.

Moreover, pun is more varied as besides polysemy it rests on the use of homophones and paronyms.