Part 1: Morphostylistics

1. The stylistics of the substantive word.

2. The stylistics of the adjective.

3. The stylistics of the verb.

4. Other parts of speech in style.

Theoretical back-up

1. The stylistics of the substantive word

The substantive words in English are the noun and the pronoun. The stylistic potential of the English Noun is fully determined by transposition adding expressive or evaluative connotations to the central core of nominal meanings. All the substantive categories of the Noun are transposable into one another. Transposition in the noun works on three levels: lexico-grammatical, grammatical and categorial.

On the lexico-grammatical level one lexico-grammatical subclass is transposable into another by which evaluative-expressive effects are achieved.

Lexico-grammatical subclass is a subdivision inside a part of speech, which has its own typical lexical meaning, a specific subparadigm, distributional-combinability limitations, word-building paradigm and a stylistic functioning.

Lexico-grammatical classifications are worked out only for the nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs. No such classification has yet been worked out for the verb.

The English Noun has the following subclasses:

Level of Hierarchy. Noun

Common Proper

Countable Uncountable

Concrete Units of Abstract Material

time, distance, measure

B eings Things Collectives

Persons Animals Fancy beings Collective Multitude

proper (family, etc.) (mankind, etc.)

If a common Noun is used as proper or vice versa, the device of antonomasia arises (Mr.Goldring = a rich gentleman; a real Don Juan = a devil with women).

Different transpositions are used on the lower levels of lexico-grammatical hierarchy. Thus materials as non-counts may be used as concrete counts: the water of the ocean - the waters of the ocean; mineral water – mineral waters; the Sahara sand – the sands of Sahara. The plural of these nouns implies the idea of vastness and majority.

When abstract and concrete nouns change their statuses there is a certain shift of expressing focus.

E.g.: If I have a dog , who has queer habits, I may say: “There’s more cat in him than dog’, and that would actually mean: ‘There is more cattishness about him than doggishnes”. The zero articles in both cases testify to the abstractness of the quality that I stress by using such common nouns as cat and dog.

The morphological level of transposition realizes itself in the categories of the noun: number, case, definiteness and indefiniteness. Numerical transpositions are working when the plural and the singular change their places. The expressivity of the following sentences from Gr. Green arises as the result of using a number of abstract plural:

Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up.

With the nouns that already have marked their plurality by lexical means, the plural inflexion intensifies this idea:

A lot of money – lots of money.

The transposition of the genitive case reflects mostly the two basic tendencies of present day English: the expansion of subclasses and the development of group possessive.

More and more classes of the noun come under the possessive:

His biography’s charm.

By contrast, to the ‘of-phrase’ the genitive is more formal and solemn, especially with the names of the countries and some abstract notions:

the economy of the country – the country economy

the best minds of England – England’s best minds.

The group possessive may be illustrated by an example from Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”: “The girl I was dancing with’s name was Burnice”.

The very possibility of constructions like those testifies to the fact that inside the analytical English a synthetic tendency is gathering momentum. The absurdity of s’ with a preposition envelopes the possessive meaning of the group and thereby realizes simultaneously the double meaning.

The possibilities of number open up the transpositions of plurality, although singularity sometimes becomes expressive too. Thus the words like chick, duck may be used as generic singulars when they mean a multitude (to keep chick, to shoot duck)… the Russian: ходить на медведя.

The plural with the people names outside the grammatical the Jones and alike is to be seen, for instance, with the names denoting whole nationalities, as in K.Aldington: “… The real war of the world was not between the Bill Davidsons and the Jean Duvals and Hans Mullers…what Bill Davidson and Jean Duval and Hans Muller ought to do was to stop blowing each other to hell”. (= The war was not between the English and French and Germans…)

The categories of definiteness and indefinitness are associated with the Articles. The debatable question as to how many articles in English there seems now to be settled in the direction of acknowledging the zero function of definiteness/indefinitness in English is analytical. It cannot be expressed in one word or contextually.

Compare the following English-Ukrainian parallels:

Yesterday my husband made me a present. Вчора чоловік зробив мені

подарунок.

My wife has taken our kid to the countryside. Жінка повезла дитину до села.

.

Where’s the money? Де гроші? ? Іn the drawer. У шухляді.

A car stood in the backyard. На дворі стояло авто.

The following cases are usually distinguished in the transposition of article.

The indefinite article may be used stylistically:

• with the proper noun to intensify the idea of uncertainty: I know a Tommy Flynn. (S.Barstow);

• to give a positive evaluation of the referent: He is a real Einstein;

• to give a negative evaluation of the referent depending on the context: …He is a Forsyte in instincts… . (J.Galsworthy);

• to give an arrogant evaluation of the referent which is merely an intensification of the negative approach: There’s a Mr. Smith wants to see you.;

• with the unique nouns to give the idea that what is happening at the moment might have been and will be indefinitely recurrent:

A moon was up… (A. Sillitce)

The definite article used with a proper noun intensifies some constant property or feature of a character: the efficient Miss Lemon. (A. Christie). Prof. I.V. Arnold also makes note of the important functions of the zero concrete commons, as in Auden’s “The Wanderer”:

The head falls forward, fatigued at evening,

And dreams of home,

Waving from window, spread of welcome,

Kissing of wife under single sheet;

But waking sees

Bird-flocks nameless to him…

Analyzing the verse, she writes: “…крайняя усталость путника, пришедшего через моря и леса, описана в обобщенных образах…Размытость образов помогает читателю почувствовать, что домашний уют и счастье- только сон”.

The categorial level of transposition in the noun is realized semantically. Each notional part of speech is characterized and distinguished from the others first of all by its grammatical semantics. The grammatical semantics of a notional part of speech is called its categorial meaning. The categorial meanings of the notional parts of speech are the following:

Parts of speech Categorial meaning