4. Syntactic morphology.

Paradigmatic morphology. The discourse on st-c morphology will concern not only morphemes, but any means of expressing grammatical meanings.

Onomaseological morphology. Of stylistic significance are:

1. synonymy. (paradigmatic equivalence or interchangeability of different morphemes)- dogs, cows, oxen, phenomena. As an example- neutral “brothers”- archaic “brethren” . The latter form is mostly used in high-flown speech. The main trends are:

   • Inflexion proper. Formal English: “Whom are you talking to”- informal colloquial speech, more democratic “Who are you talking to?”.

   • Modern colloq English- abolishing the morphological differentiation between subj 2 of the verb to be, sing and the corresponding pl in the past indicative: If I was instead of If I were.

   • “Ungrammatical” forms, showing “low” social status: we was, he do not, says I, he comed, he seed.

2. Variability of use of morphological “categorical forms” or of members of the opposition that constitute the grammatical category – tense, person and so on. The main trends are:

• Neutralization, the substitution: the unmarked member is used instead of the marked one. It happens when for example the present tense expresses past and future. “Historical present” is used to depict past events as if they were in the present:

What else do I remember?let me see….

There comes out of the cloud our house…..On the ground floor is Peggoty s kitchen, opening into a back yard.

Sometimes on the contrary the writer uses present instead of the past to characterize the character his poor education: I hears a houseful of unbecoming and ribald noises, I opens my door and calls out in the hall, I says…

• “determination- indetermination” are neutralized when one of the articles is omitted. But the neutralization is heterogeneous. The absence of articles may be due to: 1) newspaper style: Miner Sentenced to Death, Police Seek Mystery Assailant. 2) the speech of an exemplary student, showing his diligence: “Hoofs hard but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth”. 3) careless speech “Girl never said a word to him”.

• The category of gender is practically non-existent in modern English. But still it is necessary to say about such notions as personification and depersonification. personification is resorted in cases with earth and moon (feminine) and sun (masculine)/ Countries are usually classified as feminine. depersonification occurs when treating a person as a thing, an inanimate object. “Where did you find it?- Who are you calling it?Perhaps you ll kindly call me him, not it.”

• Grammatical category of person. The common form of expressing the idea of indefinite person is the pronoun one. (One never knows what happens next.). But one is often replaced by we and you. The pronoun we stands sometimes for the pronoun you, usually in speech of doctors addressing their patients: “Now, are we getting better today? ” It should be noted that the pronoun we has several meanings: 1) the speaker plus other persons; 2) the intimate substitute of you. 3) the plural of majesty (By the grace of our Lord, We, Charles the Second….) 4) the plural of modesty (in scholarly texts- now we come to the conclusion…) 5) the plural of humility (мы, стало быть, деревенские…)

• Ways of expressing impersonality: “How is one to know that?”- “How should a body know it?” (popular speech, more colloquial)

• The categorical forms of constituting the category of number. “Now, what is that? Reading books instead of working?” “How dare he talk like that to ladies?”. The relation of the whole to its part comes to the foreground.

Syntagmatic Morphology. The stylistic value of types of co-occurring morphemes and morph meanings has not been yet thoroughly investigated. Examples of morph stylistically relevant devices:

- The main advice is to abstain from repeating the same morphemes or the same parts of speech. For example if the utterance has “possessive case”, it would be better to use several ways of expressing it: Shakespeare s, of Shakespeare, Shakespearian, Shakespeare plays.

- The text of a certain style has its own peculiarities. Colloq texts comprise much fewer nouns and adjectives than bookish texts. The colloq sublang is rich in pronouns, deitic words and also words with a very broad range of meaning (thing, place, business, affair, fact). In colloq speech participial constructions are very rare , whereas emphatic particles and interjections are widely used: just, even, simply, oh, eh, now then.