3. The stylistics of the Verb

The verb is one of the richest parts of speech from both semantic and formal viewpoints. Nearly all of its categories – person, tense, aspect, voice and mood may transmit additional stylistic information when contextualized or transposed. To illustrate this let us consider the following funny example from a short story by Chudodeyev:

«Очнулась. Взглянула. Обмерла- проспала! Вскочила, стала будить. Буркнул. Отвернулся. Растолкала, подняла. Кинулась разогревать, накрывать, накручиваться. Позвала. Молчит. Заглянула – накрылся, храпит. Пощекотала. Лягнул. Рявкнула. Замычал, поднялся, поплелся. Опаздываю! Выскочила, помчалась.

Отходит! Догнала, уцепилась, повисла.

Доехала. Спрыгнула. Звенит! Побежала, ворвалась, отпихнула, проскочила. Отлегло!

Поднялась. Уселась. Вскочила, позвонила, напомнила погасить, выключить, причесать, застегнуть, обуть… Бросил…»

The verb is very rich in synonyms. Like in the case of the other parts of speech, the verbal meanings may be intensified mainly by two ways, contextually and by means of categorial transposition. Metaphor, personification, zoosemy, anthroposemy are the basic methods of breaking the combinability of the verb with its subject: The land shouted with grass, the crowds streamed like a big river; the street screamed with colour, etc. The verbal tense, which is employed for the description of events in a story is called ‘narrative time’. More often than not narration is controlled within one temporal frame, either past or present. In such a case the verbal tense appears as stylistically neutral. But the interchanges of tenses in a text produce a different effect. They are semantically and stylistically meaningful. Thus a sudden break through the past into the present imparts to a story some special vividness. Of considerable stylistic interest are the synonymic relations between the different tense-forms. Thus, all the tenses of the continuous aspect are more expressive than their indefinite counterparts. They are also more emotional, which makes their transposition stylistically meaningful. The continuous aspect may be used for the sake of special politeness and kindness to express irritation, irony, indignation etc.

Transpositions from the future into the present time are as much effective as from the past into the present. The future belongs to the system of remoteness and from this point of view between the future and the past as compared to the present there isn’t much difference. In fact, the relativity of the future in English shows itself in the very grammatical structure of the language. Thus, the future and the present forms are not differentiated in the subordinate clauses of time and condition. Besides, on a number of different occasions, the present and the future are non-distinguishable in transmitting the idea of the near future. The present continuous tense adds several obligatory nuances of modality.

E.g.:Tomorrow I leave for Odessa (neutral)

Tomorrow I’m leaving for Odessa (a hint of obligation)

The category of voice is presented by the active and passive voice.

Passivization has a number of semantic features:

• elimination of doer;

• impersonality;

• matter-of-factness;

• rhematization of the semantic object without a change of word-order.

All these features are found appropriate in scientific writings. The same remains true for official documents. Since such a state of affairs is supposed to constitute a stylistic norm, deviations from it are widely resorted to in belles-lettres which makes them very conspicuous in a style that is so allergic to impersonality and matter-of-factness.

Passive acquires additional significance in utterances of antithesis.

E.g.: To love is better than to be loved.

There is a class of verbs which have a special stylistic significance on account of their own grammatical function. They are modal verbs. Since they express one type of modality - grammatical modality, they may be considered carriers of evaluational connotation because modality, after all, is an evaluational (attitudinal) category. Prof. I.V. Arnold writes in this connection:

«Понятно, что модальные значения особенно важны для стилистики уже потому, что передают отношение говорящего к сообщаемому: усиленное утверждение, вопрос, сомнение, отрицание, желательность, долженствование и т.д. Как модальные глаголы can, may, must, ought, shall, will, так и модальные частицы just, only и модальные слова заслуживают при толковании текста самого пристального внимания».

It is the expansion of very strong modality in “shall” for all persons that has brought to its ousting from the future indefinite auxiliary paradigm - where it has almost regularly given way to “will”. Although “will” is modally weakened, it may acquire some special significance of modal volition in contraposition to “shall”. Thus, according to an old linguistic anecdote, a Frenchman once was drowning on the British side of the channel who, having entangled himself completely in the nuances of the English modals, shouted at a critical moment: “I will be drowned, I will be drowned, and nobody shall save me!” Stylistically he missed two chances of survival: either to have kept silent about an appeal to save him and simply state the unpleasant fact or change places of “will” and “shall”.