Syntactical expressive means and stylistic                  devices: PARTICULAR WAYS OF COMBINING PARTS OF THE UTTERANCE

Essential Terms:

ASYNDETON– a deliberate avoidance of connectives where they are expected to be: The audience rolled about in their chairs; they held their sides, they groaned in an agony of laughter.

POLYSYNDETONis an insistent repetition of a connective between words, phrases or clauses of an utterance:

“They were all three 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, and after we were finished with the machines, sometimes we walked back together. (H.)

attachment (the gap-sentence link) is mainly to be found in various representations of the voice of the personage – dialogue, reported speech, entrusted narrative. In the attachment 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 after­thought and is often connected with the beginning of the utterance with the help of a conjunction which brings the latter into the foregrounded opening position: "It wasn't his fault. It was yours. And mine. I now humbly beg you to give me the money with which to buy meals for you to eat. And hereafter do remember it: the next time I shan't beg. I shall simply starve." (S. L.); "Prison is where she belongs. And my husband agrees one thousand per cent." (T. C.)

apokoinu constructions – Here 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: He was the man killed that deer. (R.W.)

ELLIPSISis absence of one or both principal parts (the subject, the predicate in the sentence). The missing parts are either present in the syntactic environment of the sentence (verbal context), or they are implied by the situation. In any case these parts are easily restored from the context: 

- Where is the man I’m going to speak to?

- Out in the garden.

APOSIOPESIS(BREAK-IN-THE-NARRATIVE)– This term which in Greek means ‘silence’ denotes intentional abstention from continuing the utterance to the end. The speaker (writer) either begins a new utterance or stops altogether: “These people talked to me like this because they don’t know who I am. If only they knew – “ (M. T.)

QUESTION-IN-THE-NARRATIVE(RATIOCINATIVE QUESTION) – a figure in the form of a question which a speaker often asks and often answers himself: “For what is left the poet there?

           For Greeks a blush – for Greece a tear.” (G. B.) 

RHETORICAL QUESTION– a figure of speech based on a statement expressed in an interrogative form, which requires no answer on the part of the reader or speaker: “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?” (Dav.)

REPRESENTED SPEECHis the representation of the actual utterance by a second person, usually by the author, as if it had been spoken, whereas it had not been spoken, but is only represented in the author’s words:

1. “Could he bring a reference from where he now was? He could.” (Dr.)

2. “An idea had occurred to Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene’s trustee, the first step would be to go down and see him at Robin Hill. Robin Hill!” (G.)

Represented speech exists in 2 varieties: uttered represented speech (1) and unuttered or inner represented speech (2).

LITOTES(A VARIANT OF PERIPHRASIS)– a figure of speech which consists in the affirmation of the contrary by negation: “The wedding was no distant event.” (Au.)

I. Speak on the following:                                                                                               1.1. Particular ways of combining parts of the utterance (Types of connection):

1) asyndeton;

2) polysyndeton;

3) attachment( the gap-sentence link);

4) apokoinu constructions

1.2. Particular use of colloquial constructions:

   1) ellipsis

   2) aposiopesis (break-in-the-narrative)

   3) question-in-the-narrative

   4) rhetorical question

   5) represented speech

1.3. Stylistic use of the structural meaning:

   1) litotes

II. In your books of either home reading or individual reading find the above mentioned expressive means and stylistic devices and comment upon their structure and stylistic function.

III. Do the following exercises:

Exercise I. Discuss different types of stylistic devices dealing with the completeness of the sentence:

1. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind. (D.).

2. Malay Camp. A row of streets crossing another row of streets. Mostly narrow streets. Mostly dirty streets. Mostly dark streets. (P. A.)

3. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side. (D.)

4. A solemn silence: Mr. Pickwick humorous, the old lady, the fat gentleman cautious and Mr. Miller timorous.  (D.)

5. She merely looked at him weakly. The wonder of him! The beauty of love! Her desire toward him! (Dr.)

6. Ever since he was a young man, the hard life on Earth, the panic of 2130, the starvation, chaos, riot, want. Then bucking through the planets, the womanless, loveless years, the alone years. (R. Br.)

7. I’m a horse doctor, animal man. Do some farming, too. Near Tulip, Texas. (Т. С.)

8. A black February day. Clouds hewn of ponderous timber weighing down on the earth: an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The second day of Kennicott's absence. (S. L.)

9. And we got down at the bridge. White cloudy sky, with mother-of-pearl veins. Pearl rays shooting through, green and blue-white. River roughed by a breeze. White as a new file in the distance. Fish-white streak on the smooth pin-silver upstream. Shooting new pins. (J. C.)

10. This is a   story how a Baggins had an adventure. He may have lost the neighbours' respect, but he gained- well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end. (A. T.)

11. "People liked to be with her. And-" She paused again, "-and she was crazy about you." (R. W.)

12. What I had seen of Patti didn't really contradict Kitty's view of her: a girl who means well, but. (D. U.)

13. "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." (Ch.)

14. "Listen, I'll talk to the butler over that phone and
he'll know my voice. Will that pass me in or do I have
to ride on your back?"      

"I just work here," he said softly. "If I didn't-" he let, the rest hang in the air, and kept on smiling. (R. Ch.)

15.  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." (J. O'H.)

16. "Well, they'll get a chance now to show-" (hastily):
"I don't mean-But let's forget that." (O'N.)

17. And it was unlikely that anyone would trouble to look there-until-until-well. (Dr.)

18. There was   no breeze came through the door. (H.)

19. I love Nevada. Why, they don't even have mealtimes here. I never met so many people didn't own a watch. (A. M.)

20. Go down to Lord and Taylors or someplace and get yourself something real nice to impress the boy invited you. (J. K.)

21. There was a whisper in my family that it was love drove him out and not love of the wife he married. (J. St.)

Exercise II. Specify stylistic functions of the types of connection given below:

1. "What sort of a place is Dufton exactly?"

"A lot of mills. And a chemical factory. And a Grammar school and a war memorial and a river that runs different colours each day. And a cinema and fourteen pubs. That's really all one can say about it." (J. Вr.)

2. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in and out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping smelly tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women struggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again-quiet and magical. (J. St.)

3. By the time he had got all the bottles and dishes and knives and forks and glasses and plates and spoons and things piled up on big trays, he was getting very hot, and red in the face, and annoyed. (A. T.)

 4. Bella soaped his face and rubbed his face, and soaped his hands and rubbed his hands, and splashed him, and rinsed him, and towelled him, until he was as red as beetroot. (D.)

5. Secretly, after the nightfall, he visited the home of the Prime Minister. He examined it from top to bottom. He measured all the doors and windows. He took up the flooring. He inspected the plumbing. He examined the furniture. He found nothing. (L.)

6. With these hurried words Mr. Bob Sawyer pushed the postboy on one side, jerked his friend into the vehicle, slammed the door, put up the steps, wafered the bill on the street-door, locked it, put the key into his pocket, jumped into the dickey, gave the word for starting. (D.)

7."Well, guess it's about time to turn in." He yawned, went out to look at the thermometer, slammed the door, patted her head, unbuttoned his waistcoat, yawned, wound the clock, went to look at the furnace, yawned and clumped upstairs to bed, casually scratching his thick woolen un­dershirt. (S. L.)

8. "Give me an example," I said quietly. "Of something that means something. In your opinion." (T. C.)

9. "I got a small apartment over the place. And, well, sometimes I stay over. In the apartment. Like the last few nights." (D. U.)

10. "He is a very deliberate, careful guy and we trust each other completely. With a few reservations." (D. U.)

FUNCTIONAL STYLES

Each style of the literary language makes use of a group of language means the interrelation of which is peculiar to the given style. It is the coordination of the language means and stylistic devices that shapes the distinctive features of each style, and not the language means or stylistic devices themselves. Each style can be recognized by one or more leading features, which are especially conspicuous. For instance, the use of special terminology is a lexical characteristic of the style of scientific prose, and one by which it can easily be recognized.

A functional stylecan be defined as a system of coordinated, interrelated and interconditioned language means intended to fulfill a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect.

Typology of Functional Styles:

The English language has evolved a number of functional styles easily distinguishable one from another. They are not homogeneous and fall into several variants all having some central point of resemblance. Thus, I. R.Galperin distinguishes five classes: