Синтаксис английского языка от слова к тексту = A Students’ Guide to English Syntax from Word to Discourse. Учебное пособие

Chapter V. Text as a syntactic unit

Another way of expressing hidden negation (especially in colloquial speech) is ironical repetition of the interlocutor’s utterance or a part of it:

e.g. Then go away! – Go away! – Yes, go away.

“Shall you be back to dinner, sir?” – “Dinner!” muttered Soames and was gone (Galsworthy).

I have explained why I did that.– Explained! Explained!

Quasi-negative sentences are also some set expressions: e.g. Pickering: I think I know what you mean, Mrs. Higgins. Higgins: Well, dash me if I do! (Shaw).

“I’ve been expecting this from you,” he said.– “The deus you have!” thought Soames (Galsworthy).

He is innocent.– Innocent, like hell!

They are supposed to find diamonds.– Diamonds, my foot!

The opposite case of quasi-affirmative sentences is more rare:

Don’t I remember! (= I do).

DETACHMENT is a separation of a secondary part of a sentence from the word to which it refers logically and grammatically. In oral speech a detached part is marked with pauses; in written speech – by commas or dashes. A sure sign of detachment is inversion, as the detached part is placed in an unusual syntactic position. Any secondary part may be detached:

e.g. Very small and child-like, he never looked more than fourteen (attribute).

The church was a new building – small, cold, dark (predicative). Brave boy, he saved my life and shall not regret it (apposition). Then we could get married at home – properly (AM of manner). Talent, Mr. Micawber has, capital, Mr. Micawber has not (direct

object; Dickens).

It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an odd house (prepositional object; Galsworthy).

Functions of detachment are as follows:

a)to lay special stress on a secondary part and thus to give it additional emotional coloring;

b)to intensify the meaning of this element;

c)to express implication, because between the detached word and the word it modifies a new relationship is usually created;

d)to break the monotony of narration, to enliven it.

PARCELLATION is a variety of detachment when a word is separated from the sentence by a full stop. It is a typical feature

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

of a first-person narration, when the events are presented from the character’s point of view. Any secondary part may be segregated: e.g. You must keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man.

Or a fish, he thought (Hemingway; AM of manner).

I watched these scenes of parting. With emotion (AM of manner). I’d like to report a drug addict. My husband (apposition).

I shall never forget the expression of her face. Triumphant. Excited in a strange way (attribute).

Yesterday I saw her at the party. With your boyfriend (object). “You’re quite jealous,” Sarah said. “Like I am. Of anyone nineteen.”

(AM of comparison, object).

Parcellation performs the following functions in a fiction text:

a)It creates emphasis and lays stress on the most important part (the rheme) of the utterance;

b)It serves as an imitation of colloquial, immediate, natural speech;

c)It makes the narration compact, dynamic and vivid, helps to avoid monotony;

d)If the word or phrase has a week connection with the sentence the effect may be comical: I’m going to find my washing. And my cat.

REPRESENTED SPEECH. This is the case when the speech of a character is represented without quotation marks as if it were the author’s speech. It combines the features of direct and indirect speech and thus becomes the best way to render the meditations of a character, their thoughts and feelings, their inner monologues and dialogues. The morphological structure of represented speech is that of an indirect speech: the character is referred to by means of a third person singular pronouns; the sequence of tenses is observed; the Past Tense is commonly used. But the syntactical structure of the sentence remains unchanged, as in case of direct speech:

e.g. Over and over he was asking himself: Would she receive him? Would she recognize him? (King).

Old Jolyon was on the alert at once. Wasn’t “the man of property” going to live in his new house, then? (Galsworthy).

He was angry with himself. Why had he spilled everything out to a stranger? …Damn, he ought to have gone home to sleep instead of sitting here pouring his heart out! (Plain).

Represented speech fully preserves the emotional coloring of the utterance; it creates true to life imitation of unprepared, spontaneous speech; that’s why it abounds in exclamatory words, in

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elliptical constructions, in breaks of the narration and other means that convey the psychological state of the character.

From the somewhat lengthy discussion of syntactic expressive means reviewed above, we should draw certain conclusions.

A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serve a definite aim in communication.The belles-lettres style has a cognitive function as well as aesthetic one. On the one hand, it forces the reader to see the writer’s viewpoint on certain events, phenomena, and facts. Reading of a text is, consequently, the gradual unfolding of the author’s idea to the recipient.At the same time, reading performs an aesthetic function as it calls forth different feelings and affects the reader’s emotional sphere.

Thebelles-lettresstyleisindividualinessence.Apeculiarindividual selection of vocabulary and syntax is one of its distinctive features. Three sub-styles of the belles-lettres style – emotive prose (fiction), drama and poetry – are equally characterized by the use of various stylistic devices but differ in their structural arrangement.

Emotive prose lacks the restrictions which verse and drama have. In poetry both syntax and semantics comply with the restrictions imposed by the rhythmic pattern, and the result is brevity of expression and fresh, unexpected imagery. In drama the language of plays is entirely dialogue, which is always stylized to retain the modus of literary language.

Let us turn our attention to linguistic and stylistic analysis of a fiction text which will be presented in the following chapter.

5.4. LINGUISTIC AND STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE FICTION TEXT

Analyze the dictemes according to the plan:

1.State whether the dicteme is a monologue (cumuleme) or a dialogue (occurseme).

2.A monologue may represent three main types: it is descriptive, narrative or reasoning dicteme.

Descriptive dicteme demonstrates different techniques of description:

♦a frequent use of concrete nouns and adjectives in attributive function, providing a characteristic to them

♦enumeration, homogeneous parts of the sentence

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

♦the repetition or counterposition of words and phrases, belonging to the same thematic field

♦the repeated use of the introductory constructions of “there + be” type

♦the use of the verbs in Continuous forms and the Passive Voice

♦the use of the verbs ‘‘to be” and “to have” as well as stative verbs

♦the use of epithets, metaphors, logical comparisons, similes

♦a large number of compound nominal predicates, serving to identify a thing or a person.

♦syntactic parallel constructions

♦one-member nominal sentences

Narrative dicteme is rich in various narrative techniques, used by the author:

♦a frequent use of verbal predicates in the simple and perfect forms, aimed at showing a change of events, the very process of the development of the situation

♦the anaphoric correlative use of pronouns to indicate things and people involved in the narration

♦other ways of creating cohesion, characteristic of a suprasentential sequence: lexical repetitions of different kind,including the use of synonyms and words and phrases of different parts of speech and structure, referring to the same thematic field

♦simple two-member sentences with dynamic verbs

♦complex sentences with attributive or adverbial clauses Dictemes of a reasoning type have the following features:

♦compound sentences with several sequential clauses which contribute to the development of the topic

♦lexical ways of expressing cohesion: pronominal substitution,

synonyms or antonyms, etc

♦ syntactic parallel constructions as an important means of the compositional extension of the sentence

♦questions in the narrative which reflect the speaker’s thinking, his doubts, hopes, plans, the framing of his mind

♦ performative verbs used to express inner speech of the character involved

NOTE. They are rarely used in a pure form! Mostly we meet mixed types of dictemes!

Dialogue can be of two different types: informative and questioning. While analyzing a dialogue be ready to dwell on the following:

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♦formulate the topic of the dialogue (an occurseme of informative type/questioning type).

♦How many participants does it involve? Are their utterances mixed with author’s remarks?

♦Point out the techniques, characteristic of expressing cohesion in a dialogue: monorhematic elliptical replies, ellipses of substitution and representation, “Yes-No” sentences, asking back, direct addresses, the use of emphatic stress, the use of various questions, the use of the imperative sentences, exclamatory constructions, expressing evaluation, sentences of intermediary communicative type.

♦What ways of expressing modality can you trace?

3.Point out the topic, developed in the dicteme, concentrating on the ways of expressing the two main categories of the text

a)cohesion; b) modality.

For this purpose perform the following tasks:

a)Say how retrospective correlative ties are created between the sentences. Mind lexical repetitions, the use of synonyms and antonyms, the use of the words and phrases of different parts of speech and compositional value, referring to the same thematic field, the anaphoric use of nouns and pronouns, the repetition of conjunctions, the use of certain communicative and compositional types of sentences and their function in the text.

b)Point out what words of connotational value are used in the extract and explain how they contribute to the development of the topic; pay special attention to the use of stylistic devices.

c)Mention the leading sentences, the logical climax and the conclusion (for a cumuleme).

d)Comment on the special techniques of arranging a dialogue (occurseme).

e)Mind the special techniques of arranging a) descriptive,

b)narrative, c) reasoning supra-sentential sequences.

f)Comment on the topic-and-focus organization of the following complex and compound sentences.

How can you explain the use of the above-mentioned techniques and devices, taking into consideration the topic developed?

If you answer all of the questions and perform all the given tasks CONGRATULATIONS! – you are able not only to read and enjoy the text but also comprehend and analyze it on a high proficiency level.

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

EXERCISES TO CHAPTER V

Exercise 1. Consider the following texts. State various types of the theme and rheme progression, text connectors and ways of lexical cohesion. Comment on syntactical expressive means (SEM).

1. A phone rang, and Lewis took it. He listened carefully. Reggie opened the Sunday New Orleans paper. At the bottom of the front page was her face. The picture was taken from the bar registry, and it was next to Mark’s fourth-grade class photo. Side by side. Escaped. Disappeared. On the run. Boyette and all that. She turned to the comics.

“The Client” by John Grisham

2. Mark looked around at the other hangars, and the terminal, and a plane landing on the runway in front of them. This had become terribly exciting. Not three weeks earlier, he’d beaten the crap out of a subdivision kid at school after the kid taunted him because he’d never flown. If they could only see him now. Rushed to the airport by private car, waiting for his private jet to take him anywhere he wanted to go. No more trailers. No more fights with subdivision kids. No more notes to Mom, because now she would be at home.

“The Client” by John Grisham

3. Reggie led them into the small but clean office,and offered Dianne coffee. She declined. Trumann, McThune, Lewis, and the gang waited nervously outside the door. Trumann, especially, was anxious. What if they changed their minds? What if Muldanno got the body? What if?

“The Client” by John Grisham

4. “Children are rrree-volting” screamed The Grand High Witch. “Vee vill vipe them all avay! Vee vill scrrrub them off the face of the earth! Vee vill flush them down the drain!” “Yes, yes!” chanted the audience.“Wipe them away! Scrub them off the earth! Flush them down the drain!” “Children are foul and filthy!” thundered The Grand High Witch.“They are! They are!” chorused the English witches. “They are foul and filthy!” “Children are dirty and stinky!” screamed The Grand High Witch.“Dirty and stinky!” cried the audience, getting more and more worked up.“Children are smelling of dogs'drrroppings!” screeched The Grand High Witch. “Pooooooo!” cried the audience. “Pooooooo! Pooooooo! Pooooooo!” “They are vurse than dogs' drrroppings!” screeched The Grand High Witch. “Dogs' drrroppings is smelling like violets and prrrimroses compared vith children!”

“The Witches” by Roald Dahl

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5. "Delayed Action Mouse-Maker is a green liqvid," explained The Grand High Witch, "and vun droplet in each choc or sveet vill be qvite enough. So here is vot happens:"Child eats choc vich has in it Delayed Action Mouse-Maker liqvid…"Child goes home feeling fine… "Child goes to bed,still feeling fine…"Child vakes up in the morning still okay…"Child goes to school still feeling fine…"Formula,you understand, is delayed action, and is not vurrrking yet.""We understand, O Brainy One!" cried the audience. "But when does it start working?""It is starting to vurrrk at exactly nine o'clock, vhen the child is arriving at school!" shouted The Grand High Witch triumphantly. "Child arrives at school. Delayed Action Mouse-Maker immediately starts to vurrrk. Child starts to shrrrink. Child is starting to grow fur. Child is starting to grow tail. All is happening in prrreecisely tventy-six seconds. After tventy-six seconds, child is not a child any longer. It is a mouse!" "A mouse!" cried the witches. "What a frumptious thought!"

“The Witches” by Roald Dahl

6. A Note about Witches. In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about REAL WITCHES. The most important thing you should know about REAL WITCHES is this. Listen very carefully. Never forget what is coming next. REAL WITCHES dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary women. They live in ordinary houses and they work in ORDINARY JOBS. That is why they are so hard to catch. A REAL WITCH hates children with a red-hot sizzling hatred that is more sizzling and red-hot than any hatred you could possibly imagine. A REAL WITCH spends all her time plotting to get rid of the children in her particular territory. Her passion is to do away with them, one by one. It is all she thinks about the whole day long. Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman or driving round in a fancy car (and she could be doing any of these things), her mind will always be plotting and scheming and churning and burning and whizzing and phizzing with murderous bloodthirsty thoughts."Which child," she says to herself all day long, "exactly which child shall I choose for my next squelching?" A REAL WITCH gets the same pleasure from squelching a child as you get from eating a plateful of strawberries and thick cream. She reckons on doing away with one child a week. Anything less than that and she becomes grumpy. One child a week is fifty-two a year. Squish them and squiggle them and make them disappear.

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

That is the motto of all witches. Very carefully a victim is chosen. Then the witch stalks the wretched child like a hunter stalking a little bird in the forest. She treads softly. She moves quietly. She gets closer and closer. Then at last, when everything is ready… phwisst!.. and she swoops! Sparks fly. Flames leap. Oil boils. Rats howl. Skin shrivels. And the child disappears.

7. Catelyn was shaking. It was the grief, the cold, the howling of the dire wolves. Night after night, the howling and the cold wind and the grey empty castle, on and on they went, never changing, and her boy lying there broken, the sweetest of her children, the gentlest, Bran who loved to laugh and climb and dreamt of knighthood, all gone now, she would never hear him laugh again. Sobbing, she pulled her hand free of his and covered her ears against those terrible howls. "Make them stop!" she cried. "I can't stand it, make them stop, make

them stop, kill them all if you must, just make them stop!"

“A Game Of Thrones” by George R.R. Martin

8. "I neither like nor dislike Severus," said Lupin. "No, Harry, I am speaking the truth," he added, as Harry pulled a skeptical expression. "We shall never be bosom friends, perhaps; after all that happened between James and Sirius and Severus, there is too much bitterness there. But I do not forget that during the year I taught at Hogwarts, Severus made the Wolfsbane Potion for me every month, made it perfectly, so that I did not have to suffer as I usually do at the full moon."

9. The long-awaited, eagerly anticipated, arguably over-hyped Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has arrived, and the question on the minds of kids, adults, fans, and skeptics alike is, "Is it worth the hype?" The answer, luckily, is simple: yep. A magnificent spectacle more than worth the price of admission, Harry Potter and the HalfBlood Prince will blow you away. However, given that so much has gone into protecting the secrets of the book (including armored trucks and injunctions), don't expect any spoilers in this review. It's much more fun not knowing what's coming – and in the case of Rowling's delicious sixth book, you don't want to know. Just sit tight, despite the earth-shattering revelations that will have your head in your hands as you hope the words will rearrange themselves into a different story. But take one warning to heart: do not open Harry Potter and the Half-

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Blood Prince until you have first found a secluded spot, safe from curious eyes, where you can tuck in for a good long read. Because once you start, you won't stop until you reach the very last page.

10. The most maternal of the peculiars, Bronwyn was more like a mother to the young ones than even Miss Peregrine. It was Bronwyn who tucked them into bed at night, Bronwyn who read them stories and kissed their foreheads. Her strong arms seemed made to gather them in warm embraces, her broad shoulders to carry them. But this

was no time for stories – and she said as much.

“Hollow City” by Ransom Riggs

11. “We’ll find a loop somehow,” said Emma.“There are landmarks and signposts for those who know what to look for. And if there aren’t, we’ll find someone like us, a fellow peculiar who can show us where the nearest loop is. And in that loop there will be an ymbryne, and that ymbryne will be able to give Miss Peregrine the help she needs.”

“Hollow City” by Ransom Riggs

12. “Take us up!” I shouted. The hollow very close now; the pain extraordinary.

For a few endless seconds, nothing happened. The hollow bolted around the bend, using its muscular tongues like legs, its atrophied human limbs hanging useless. Then a metallic squeal rang out, the rope pulled taut, and we lurched into the air.

The hollow had nearly closed the distance between us. It galloped with jaws wide open, as if to collect us between its teeth the way a whale feeds on plankton. We weren’t quite halfway up the wall when it reached the ground below us, looked up, and squatted like a spring about to uncoil.

“It’s going to jump!” I shouted. “Pull your legs into the net!” The hollow drove its tongues into the ground and sprang upward.

We were rising fast and it seemed like the hollow would miss us, but just as it reached the apex of its jump, one of its tongues shot out and lassoed Emma around the ankle.

13. “When you burn it,” she said, “then I’ll give you the capsules – all four of these – and the pain will go away.”

His tongue wanted to say Yes! Yes, okay! and so he bit it. “I’m waiting, Paul.”

Oh why in Christ’s name are you doing this asshole Horatio-at- thebridge act and who in Christ’s name are you trying to impress? Do you

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

think this is a movie or a TV show and you are getting graded by some audience on you bravery? You can do what she wants or you can hold out. If you hold out you’ll die and then she’ll burn the manuscript anyway. Come on, come on, wise up! Even Galileo recanted when he saw they really meant to go through with it!

So spoke the opportunist, the survivor. Yet another part, failing now, near comatose itself, went wailing off into the darkness: A hundred and ninety thousand words! Five lives! Two years’ work! And what was the real bottom line: The truth! What you knew about the fucking truth!

She held the matches immovably before him and said: “You can do as you choose.”

So he burned his book.

14. “What you need, Denis, is a nice plump young wife, a fixed income, and a little congenial but regular work.”

“What I need is you.” This was what he ought to have retorted, that was what he wanted passionately to say. He could not say it. His desire fought against his shyness. “What I need is you.” Mentally he shouted the words, but not a sound issued from his lips. He looked at her despairingly. Couldn’t she see what was going on inside him? Couldn’t she understand? “What I need is you.” He would say it, he would – he would.

“I think I shall go and bathe,” said Anne. “It’s too hot.” The opportunity had passed.

15. The Rat was running round the room busily, with his arms full of weapons of every kind, distributing them in four little heaps on the floor, and saying excitedly under his breath, as he ran, “Here’s-a-sword-for-the-Rat, here’s-a-sword-for- the-Mole, here’s-a-sword-for-the-Toad, here’s-a-sword-for-the- Badger! Here’s-a-pistol-for-the-Rat, here’s-a-pistol-for-the-Mole, here’s-a-pistol-for-the-Toad, here’s-a-pistol-for-the-Badger!” And so on in a regular, rhythmical way.

“The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame

Exercise 2. Analyze the following dictemes according to the plan:

1. In the morning he came definitely awake. Then his brain flamed with the horror of thirstiness. The sun was on his face, the dew was steaming from his wet clothes. Like one possessed, he got up. There,

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