13. General considerations on the syntactical level of stylistic analysis.

Stylistic syntax - aimed at finding out what sublanguage is involved and what expressive value a syntactical unit (sentence or other utterance) has, treated in abstraction from its environment.

Sentence is a sequence of relatively independent lexical and phrasal units (units = words and word combinations).

One word can already be a complete sentence (“Spring.” “April.” etc.)

The difference between a word and a sentence is the structure of the sentence can be changed: it can be complete or incomplete, simple, compound, or

complex; its constituents, length, word order, as well as communicative type (assertion, negation, interrogation, exhortation) are variable.

In terms of sublanguage theory, we must decide what should be first in the central area and what should be in prepherrial areas. In other words, we have to consider what is a norm of the sentence and what is considered to be a deviant of the sentence.

Normal or neutral (most popular) structure of the sentence:

○ two-member sentence, containing subject and predicate and a few

○ secondary elements;

○ the order of words should be normal;

○ the function (the communicative purpose) of the sentence is expected to be consistent with its structure (it means a declarative sentence must express a statement and question sentence must express sentence)

○ nothing should be missing in the sentence

● Structure of deviant sentence:

○ From the viewpoint of quantitative characteristics of the syntactic structure, it is self-evident that there are only two possible varieties of deviations -

■ the absence of elements which are obligatory in a neutral construction;

■ excess of non essential elements

○ While dealing with a chain of sentences, the sequence of sentences constituting a text, we search for stylistic functions in the sequence of sentence forms.

○ With regard to the distribution of the elements we should look for and classify the stylistic value of various types of inversion.

○ By analyzing general syntactic meanings, communicative aims of sentences, stylistic effects of shifts in syntactic meaning of changes in the use of syntactic forms are established.

● 4 groups of classification of syntactic stylistic devices

○ reduction of the sentence model;

○ extension of the sentence model;

○ change of word-order;

○ transposition of sentence meaning.

14. SDs based on the reduction of the sentence model.

An elliptical sentence is such a syntactic structure in which there is no subject, or predicate, or both. The main parts of ES are omitted by the speaker intentionally in case when they are semantically redundant. Where did you go?

In contemporary prose Ellipsis is mainly used in dialogs where it is consciously employed by the author to reflect the natural omnitions characterised by oral colloquial speech. Often used in authors' remarks commenting the speech of a character.

In oral speech the phenomenon of ellipsis is rather norm than a special stylistic device. A speaker uses elliptical sentences in order to save needless efforts, to spare time and language means.

○ Elliptical sentences acquire expressiveness when they are used in emotive prose (or sometimes in poetry) as a means of imitating real colloquial speech, live talk or as a means of exposing a character's emotions.

● A nominative sentence is a variant of one-member structures: it has neither subject nor predicate.

Communicative functions. A sequence of nominative sentences makes for dynamic description of events. Sets of nominative sentences are used to expressively depict the time of the action, the place of the action, the atten-dant circumstances of the action, the participants of the action

Structural types of nominative sentences:

○ Unextended nominative sentences consisting of a single element. Morning. April. Problems.

○ Extended nominative sentences consisting of the basic component and one or more words modifying it. Nice morning. late April. Horribly great problems.

○ Multicomponent nominative sentences containing two or more basic elements. Late April and horribly great problems

Sentences consisting only of a nominal group, are semantically and communicatively self-sufficient. Isolated verbs, pro­ceeding from the ontological features of a verb as a part of speech, cannot be considered one-member sentences as they always rely on the context for their semantic fulfillment. The communicative function of a nominative sentence is a mere statement of the existence of an object, a phenomenon. The structural and semantic diversity of nominative sentences as well as their position and distribution within a certain context impart rather significant stylistic value to them. A sequence of nominative sentences makes for the dynamic description of the events, depiction of the time of the action, the place, the attendant circumstances, its participants, etc. Or on the contrary, the dissemination of nominative sentences into the context breaks the even flow of narration, highlights the very minute changes in the depicted situation, character’s mood, thoughts, recollections and emotions. A nominative sentence in final position sums up (logically or emotionally) the information of the passage.

● Aposiopesis |ˌapə(ʊ)ˌsaɪəˈpiːsɪs| (break-in-the-narrative) is also realized through incompleteness of sentence structure, though this is of different structural and semantic nature. It appears when the speaker is unwilling to proceed and breaks off his narration abruptly. If you go on like this...

Aposiopesis is a common feature of colloquial speech. In literary discourse aposiopesis, like ellipsis and one-member sentences, is mostly to be found in dialogues, direct, indirect or represented speech. This stylistic device is used in emotive prose with the purpose of conveying speaker’s emotions without naming them directly or expressing such modal meanings as threat, warning, doubt, excitement, promise Aposiopesis, in a broad sense, is not confined only to the function of speech characterization. A writer may deliberately leave his whole work (a story, a novel, a play) incomplete (unfinished) thus making the readers to arrive at the conclusion predetermined by the whole semantic structure of the text on their own.

● Asyndeton бессоюзие is deliberate omission of structurally significant conjunctions and connectives. We had heard planes coming, seen them pass overhead, watched them go far to the left, heard them bombing…

It becomes stylistically charged if there is a deliberate omission of the connective where it is generally expected to be according to the norms of the literary language. Cutting off connecting words in asyndetic sentences helps to cre­ate the effect of tense, energetic, active prose.

● Parcelling парцеляция is intentional splitting of sentences into smaller parts separated by full stops. Oswald bates Rolf. Very much. Then the pain began. Slow. Methodical. And professional