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Task C - Lexical Analysis
#
ASPECT
CHARACTERISTICS
1
Vocabulary
Basic common-core vocabulary. Some common-core words of Germanic
origin. Some learned and abstract words, derived from Latin and Greek.
2
Lexis
The lexis is restricted almost entirely to… The semantic areas are… The
text concentrates on… The highly evaluative lexis in terms of… The lexis
feels more complex. The value-laden lexis is strong emotionally.
3
Key words
A few repetitions of words refer to… The repetition of ―…‖ indicates
how much the focus of the description is restricted to… The patterns of
repetition focus on… Synonymic repetitions also involve a considerable
amount of evaluative lexis. Elegant variation.
4
Word structure
The words are very simple / complex in structural terms. Single-syllable
words are printed normally.
TEXT
REPEATED WORD
NUMBER
EFFECT
STEINBECK
AUSTEN
LAWRENCE
WORDS
STEINBECK
AUSTEN
LAWRENCE
1-syllable words
% % %
2-syllable words
% % %
3-syllable words
% % %
4-syllable words
% % %
5-syllable words
% % %
Total words
100%
100 %
100%
1. Is the vocabulary composed mainly of basic, common-core terms (e.g.
table, tree, eyes) or more abstract, learned or specialized terms (e.g. faith, metaphor,
neutron)?
2. What areas of our vocabulary (semantic fields) do the words relate to
(e.g. the body, education, science, morality)? Remember that the semantic fields you
notice may sometimes be general (e.g. vegetation) and sometimes more specific (e.g.
trees).
3. What words, if any, are repeated, and how often?
4. How complex is the lexis (the complexity of words can be measured by
counting the number of syllables in each word)?
Table 14 – Useful Lexis Phrases
The semantic fields can be seen in the lexical repetitions.
Table 15 – Key Words
The syllable counts for the words reveal the texts in terms of complexity.
Table 16 – Syllable Statistics
21
Task D – Comparing Sentence Lengths (Syntax)
CATEGORY
AUSTEN
STEINBECK
LAWRENCE
ELLEGÅRD NORM
Words
Sentences
S-Length average
17.8
1. For each passage, count the number of words in each sentence and
record them.
2. How does what you find correlate with your initial impressions of the
styles of the different passages?
3. Note that, for comparative purposes, we have given you a sentence
length average „norm‟ for prose writing, calculated in the 1970s by a Swedish linguist
called Ellegård. His „norm‟ was based on a 1 million words corpus of 20th century
American English writing called the Brown Corpus (the corpus was collected at
Brown University in 1964).
Table 17 – Statistical Comparison of the Passages
Section 1.2. Self-Expression
Now when we have some initial impressions and results of elementary
statistical work, try to characterize the styles of the different writers. Write down the
comparative stylistic analysis of three passages given above.
Notes
22
2. Expressive Means & Stylistic Devices
(Expressive Stylistics)
Thus, we are thinking of modern intellectual life in terms of dichotomy of the
„two cultures‟, art and science. Intuition for discovery works better than a set of
lifeless mechanical procedures. Anyway we need proofs. We consider insight,
understanding, and feeling to be more important than being objective. And we are
looking for any theoretical requirements of science. Simultaneously.
Style as the product and process of deliberately arranging items (often with
symbolic significance) influences and affects our senses, emotions, and intellect. It
encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression.
In language the media of expression include EXPRESSIVE MEANS and STYLISTIC
DEVICES.
Expressive means (EMs) of a language are those phonetic, morphological,
word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactic forms which exist in language-asa-system for the purpose of logical and/or emotional intensification of the utterance
[Гальперин, 1977: 27].
Stylistic devices (SDs) are intentional literary uses of the language facts for
further intensification of the emotional or the logical emphasis contained in the
expressive means. Compared to the EMs, stylistic devices are formed in speech, do
not exist out of the context, and represent a greater amount of information. Basically,
all stylistic devices are the result of revaluation of neutral or expressive words,
word-combinations and syntactic structures. Revaluation makes language units
obtain connotations and stylistic value.
2.1. Phonostylistics
Я всегда считал, что музыка слова — явление совсем не
акустическое и состоит не в благозвучии гласных и
согласных, отдельно взятых, а в соотношении значения речи
и ее звучания (Б. Пастернак, Люди и положения).
Sound symbolism, parallelism, rhyme and rhythm are the points of language
foregrounding which most obviously relate it to music. In music there are expected
patterns – of melody, rhythm, harmonic progression, abstract form, and a composer‟s
skill lies not in mechanically reproducing these, but in introducing unexpected
departures from them [Leech, 1969: 57].
2.1.1. Phonetic & Phonological Stylistics
Phonetic language level may seem not to be worth considering, but in fact
things are more complex than they first appear. A phoneme taken separately has little
aesthetic value; however in combination with other words a word may acquire a
desired phonetic effect. The way a separate word sounds may produce a certain
23
euphoric impression, nevertheless this is a matter of individual perception and feeling
and therefore subjective [Гальперин, 1977: 123].
It is interesting that everything in phonetics deals with stress, i.e. with measure:
the stressed syllable attracts attention of rhythm, rhyme, sound symbolism, chiming.
In linguistics, stress means phonological use of prominence in language. In music,
accent is an emphasis placed on a particular note. In typography, emphasis is the
exaggeration of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text
- to emphasize them. Thus, stress/accent/emphasis is used to attract attention, make
something different. Stress causes expression.
SOUND SYMBOLISM
In the 18th century, Mikhail Lomonosov propagated an idiosyncratic theory
that words containing the front vowel sounds E, I, YU should be used when depicting
tender subjects, and those with back vowel sounds O, U, Y - to when describing
things that may cause fear (like anger, envy, pain, and sorrow).
SOUND SYMBOLISM (phonosemantics) refers to the idea that phonemes carry
meaning in and of themselves. The most obvious examples of this are onomatopoeic
words like buzz or hum, where the sound structure of the nouns mimic the sound they
represent in the world outside language
[http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic5a/7symbol.htm, Retrieved
14.07.2011].
In the poem Piano by D. H. Lawrence below, the highlighted words are sound
symbolic. The effect here is quite complex, and involves a sort of 'double take' in
terms of viewpoint:
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
The perceptual double-take here appears to be related to viewpoint. An adult is
remembering what it was like when he was a child. For the child sitting under the
piano, because he is very close to the strings of the piano, the noises are likely to be
(a) loud and (b) full of resonance, even when they will seem like clear tinkling noises
to others in the room. The word boom is sound symbolic of this auditory experience it is voiced throughout (maximising the resonance in the word) and has a long vowel
24
and a nasal, suggesting sound length for the piano notes. Nasals and vowels produced
#
ASPECT
CONTENT
1
Most literal sense
The purely mimetic power of language – its ability to
imitate other (mostly non-linguistic) sounds.
2
Wider and abstract
interpretation
Representation not just the sound of description, but the
activity as a whole. The connection is made not via the ear
alone, but through the little understood pathways of
empathy and synesthesia1.
3
Mysterious plane
of suggestion
General „color‟ of sound on such dimensions
„hardness/softness‟, „thinness/sonority‟ [Shapiro, 1965: 9].
at the back of the mouth (as /u:/ is) are also often associated with indistinctness (cf.
gloom). The words tingling strings also have voiced nasals at the ends of each of the
three syllables.
The repeated high front vowel /ɪ/ is a short, clear sound and so is the repeated
/t/ in the initial consonant cluster - a voiceless stop. These qualities give rise to the
idea of a series of bright, short notes - the kind of sound associated with the sound
symbolic word tinkling which is phonetically very close to tingling but replaces a
voiced nasal with a voiceless stop. This more distinct perception seems to represent
mainly the view of the adult (except for the /ŋ/ nasal, which is more boom-like, so
with „boom‟ we get the child's viewpoint alone, but with tingling strings we get a
blend of the viewpoint of the adult looking back and the original perceptual
experience of the child
[http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic5a/7symbol5.htm, Retrieved
15.07.2011].
Thus, sound symbolism happens when we are able to interpret the sounds in
words and phrases as being particularly meaningful. The most obvious example here
is onomatopoeia.
Onomatopoeia (pronounced / /) can be understood in a number of
different ways [Leech, 1969: 97-98]:
Table 18 - Onomatopoiea
Usually onomatopoetic words imitate sounds produced by animate and
inanimate subjects. To some extent, such a division is relevant due to the character of
nature itself:
1
From the ancient Greek σύν (syn) = together and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis) = sensation, synesthesia is a
neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic,
involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Over 60 types of synesthesia have been reported, but
only a fraction have been evaluated by scientific research. Even within one type, synesthetic perceptions vary in
intensity and people vary in awareness of their synesthetic perceptions. While cross-sensory metaphors (e.g., loud shirt,
bitter wind or prickly laugh) are sometimes described as „synesthetic‟, true neurological synesthesia is involuntary. It is
estimated that synesthesia could possibly be as prevalent as 1 in 23 persons across its range of variants
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#Sound_.E2.86.92_color_synesthesia, Retrieved 14.07.2011].
25
Table 19 - Nature of Onomatopoetic Words
PEOPLE
ANIMALS
NATURE
TOOLS / MACHINES
Sigh, whistle,
giggle, chuckle
Hiss (snakes), bow-wow
(dogs), mew / miaow and purr
(cats), hoink (pigs), baa-baa
(sheep), cackle j (chickens),
quack (ducks), cuckoo, caw
(crows), moo (cows).
Bubble,
rustle,
splash.
Roar, tinkle, ding-
dong, jingle, click,
tick, tick-tuck,
bang, slap, rap,
tap.
Кхе-кхе, чмок;
шлепать,
хлопать,
хохотать.
Мяу, гав-гав, ква-ква, чик-
чирик; рычать, мычать,
шипеть, щебетать.
Кап-кап,
чпок;
шелестеть,
журчать.
Бух, пиф-паф.
ONOMATOPOEIA
EXAMPLES
Direct
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep…
(W. Blake)
Тук! – падал в ольшанике выстрел, а где-то бугром, за
пахотой Эхо скороговоркой бормотало так! И опять часто:
тук, тук, тук! А за бугром отвечало: так! так! так!.. (М.
Шолохов, Донские рассказы).
Indirect
Mostly he moved in urgent, precise, clipped movements – go, go,
go – and talked the same way – staccato sentences.
Some stylisticians distinguish two varieties of onomatopoeia:
1) Direct onomatopoeia is contained in words that imitate natural sounds.
These words have different degree of imitative quality. Some of them immediately
bring to mind whatever it is that produces the sound. Others require the exercise of a
certain amount of imagination to decipher it.
2) Indirect onomatopoeia is a combination of sounds the aim of which is to
make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense.
Table 20 – Direct & Indirect Onomatopoeia
In the example with staccato the onomatopoetic effect is achieved by the
repetition of the unonomotopoetic word go the pronunciation of which is prompted
by the word clipped, suggesting short, quick, abrupt motions. One seems even to hear
the sound of his footsteps.
Nevertheless, the imitative aspect of language is often overestimated. A
comparatively small number of words in a language are onomatopoetic: buzz, clatter
cuckoo in English, ха-ха, бабах in Russian, etc. But even in these cases, the
correlation between sound and reference is only partial and indirect: although English
whisper and French chuchoter are both felt to be onomatopoetic, there is scarcely any
phonetic similarity between them [Leech, 1969: 96].
26
Onomatopoeia is one kind of sound symbolism: words can sound appropriate
SCHEME
DEVICE
EXAMPLE
C V C
Alliteration
great / grow
C V C
Assonance
great / fail
C V C
Consonance
great / meat
C V C
Reverse Rhyme
great / grazed
C V C
Pararhyme
great / groat
C V C
Rhyme
great / bait
SD
EXAMPLES
ALLITERATION
He mocked her. ‗I suppose you had out the family silver, the best
china, the gold plated samovar. Oh, and a cake from Parry‘s.‘ ‗No.
We had bread and butter‘, she answered equably, ‗and the brown
teapot‘ (A.J. Cronin, The Citadel).
Лет до ста
расти
нам без старости.
Год от года
расти
нашей бодрости.
Славьте,
молот и стих,
землю молодости.
(B. Маяковский, Хорошо!)
not just in relation to the sense of hearing, but also in relation to the other senses.
The example of phonemes and size connection is an English comedy duo
called Little and Large. Thinking about the way the vowels /i/ and /a:/ are
pronounced in the mouth, it is obvious why they didn‟t call themselves Small and
Big. In Little and Large a kind of chiming is also used.
CHIMING
Chiming is the device of connecting two words by similarity of sound so that
you are made to think of their possible connection [Empson, 1947: 12]. Phonological
parallelism exists wherever there is a partial, not full, correspondence between pieces
of text:
Table 21 - Phonological Parallelism
Alliteration (pronounced / /) is a phonetic stylistic device which
aims at impacting a melodic effect to the utterance. The essence of this device lies in
the repetition of similar consonant sounds, in close succession, usually at the
beginning of the successive words [Гальперин, 1997: 126]:
Table 22 - Alliteration
27
Alliteration in English is rooted in the traditions of folklore: old English verses
SD
SPHERE OF
USAGE
EXAMPLES
ALLITERATION
Proverbs
It is neck or nothing.
Мели, Емеля, твоя неделя.
Idioms
As good as gold. Waste not, want not.
Пан или пропал.
Book titles
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austin).
The School for Scandal (Sheridan).
SD
EXAMPLES
INDIRECT
ONOMATOPOEIA
He made several efforts to speak – a queer sound, like snow falling
off a roof (A.J. Cronin, The Citadel).
ALLITERATION
Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee.
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me.
(W. Blake)
were based on alliteration and rhythm. The traditions of folklore are revived in
Modern English, where alliteration and rhythm are frequently used in poetry, in
emotive prose, in newspaper headlines, in the titles of books, in proverbs, in idioms
[Гальперин, 1997: 127]:
Table 23 - Alliteration & Rhythm
It is necessary to distinguish indirect onomatopoeia and alliteration. Usually
indirect onomatopoeia, unlike alliteration, demands some mention of what makes the
sound, as the repetition of the sound [f] actually produces the sound of the falling
snow in the line by A. J. Cronin:
Table 24 - Alliteration & Indirect Onomatopoeia
Alliteration in English are not to be defined with reference to words: it is the
main stressed syllable of a word which generally carries thee alliteration, not
necessarily its initial syllable. Thus, long alliterates with unlovely in Tennyson‟s Here
in the long unlovely street [Leech, 1969: 92].
Assonance (pronounced / /) is employed to signify recurrence of
stressed vowels. Thus, the repetition of the diphthong [ei] in the following lines by E.
Poe does not just create a musical accompaniment but also perform a function of
semantic attraction:
Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aiden,
I shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore –
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name
28
Lenor?
Prof. I.V. Arnold mentions also the term vocalic alliteration (although the
recurring vowels only seldom occupy the initial position in the word). The term
assonance is also used to denote an imperfect rhyme, when only vowels are rhymed:
number – blunder, same – cane.
Alliteration and assonance both may produce the effect of euphony (a sense of
ease and comfort in pronouncing and hearing) or cacophony (a sense of strain and
discomfort in pronouncing and hearing) [Кухаренко, 2009: 14].
The sound enacts the sense rather than merely echoes it [Nowottny, 1962: 116].
Sound enacting sense can be extended to other fields apart from phonemic repetition,
for instance, metre can be used mimetically to suggest sluggish movement, galloping,
etc.
Alliteration is usually described as the repetition of the same consonants, and
assonance as the repetition of the same vowels. But we will argue below (i) that some
identical sound repetitions do not count as alliteration or assonance and (ii) that
sometimes 'repetitions' which are similar but not identical do count sometimes.
Given that there are only around 45 phonemes in any dialect of English,
statistically phoneme repetition is going to happen a lot. So it is unlikely that all
repetitions will be perceived as alliteration/assonance/consonance by readers.
Below are some lines from the famous poem The Rape of the Lock by
Alexander Pope. It is written in rhyming couplets and he called it „an heroi-comical
poem‟. He wrote it in response to hearing about a high-society quarrel between two
noble families over the fact that Lord Petre had forcibly cut off a lock of Miss
Arabella Fermor's hair. Pope's poem makes fun of this incident. Here, his „heroine‟
the Lady Belinda, is seated at her dressing table, putting her make-up on:
Here piles of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billets-doux.
Now awful Beauty puts on all its Arms;
The Fair each moment rises in her Charms…
The satire is obvious enough in the third line of the quotation, in the phrase
„awful Beauty‟ and the ludicrous implicit comparison between putting on make-up
and preparing for battle.
It should be clear from the last exercise that alliteration is not a straightforward
matter. Whether we perceive a pattern of consonants as being alliteration or not will
depend upon a number of interrelated factors. And the same will be true of vowel
patterns and assonance.
Alliterative and assonantal patterns are felt more strongly if they involve
lexical words and less if they involve grammatical words (because it is easier to
perceive semantic connections between lexical words). They are most perceptible if
they occur at the beginnings of words (the ends of words are next most perceptible
and the middle of words the least). They are more perceptible if the occur in stressed
syllables than unstressed syllables. They are more likely to be noticed if they help
29
make an interpretative connection, and less likely if they do not help to promote such
SCHEME
TYPE OF
RHYME
EXAMPLES
AABB
Paired
Whether or not we find what we
are seeking
is idle, biologically speaking.
(E. Millay)
Всю жизнь хотел я быть,
как все,
Но мир в своей красе
Не слушал моего нытья
И быть хотел - как я!
(Б. Пастернак)
ABAB
Alternate
Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read –
So he vanish‘d from my sight,
And I pluck‘d a hollow reed.
(W. Blake)
Румяной зарею
Покрылся восток,
В селе за рекою
Потух огонѐк.
(A.C. Пушкин)
ABBA
Enclosing
How soon hath Time, the subtle
thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three and
twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full
career,
But my late spring no bud or
blossom shew'th.
(J. Milton)
Уж подсыхает хмель на
тыне.
За хуторами, на бахчах,
В нежарких солнечных
лучах
Краснеют бронзовые
дыни.
(И.А. Бунин)
a connection. This is where the parallelism rule comes in.
RHYME
Rhyme (pronounced / /) is identity of sound between words or verse-lines
extending from the end to the last fully accented vowel and not further [Concise
Oxford Dictionary].
Canonical rhymes come at the ends of lines of poetry, and patterns of these
rhymes are usually called RHYME SCHEMES2:
Table 25 - Rhyme Patterns
There may also be more complicated variations of these patterns. There are
many different forms, each with its own associations and resonances to cause a
particular effect on the reader (for detailed information go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyme_scheme). Moreover, identity and particularly
similarity of sound combinations may be relative:
well as forms specific to the genre, which are broken down extensively in the books How to Rap and Book of Rhymes.
2
It is interesting, hip-hop music and rapping‟s rhyme schemes include traditional schemes such as couplets, as
30
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