Добавил:
Upload Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз: Предмет: Файл:
BIM_ekz (1).doc
Скачиваний:
35
Добавлен:
19.12.2018
Размер:
295.42 Кб
Скачать

6. Functional styles

Language means which we choose for communication depend on several factors, the most important among them being the situation of the communication act. Indeed, depending on the situation (which includes the purpose of the communication and its participants) we adhere either to informal, or to formal manner. The former is observed in everyday non-official communication which is known as colloquial speech. Colloquial speech occupies a prominent place in our lives, and is viewed by some linguists as a system of language means so strongly differing from those presented in the formal (literary) communication that it can be classified as an independent entity with its own peculiar units and rules of their structuring. (See the works of O. Lapteva, O. Sirotinina, L. Zemskaya.)

The literary communication, most often (but not always) materialized in the written form, is not homogeneous, and proceeding from its function (purpose) we speak of different functional styles. As the whole of the language itself, functional styles are also changeable. Their quantity and quality change in the course of their development. At present most scholars differentiate such functional styles: scientific, official, publicist, newspaper, belles-lettres.

Scientific style is employed in professional communication. Its most conspicuous feature is the abundance of terms denoting objects, phenomena and processes characteristic of some particular field of science and technique. Scientific style is also known for its precision, clarity and logical cohesion which is responsible for the repeated use of such cliches as: "Proceeding from..."; "As it was said above..."; "In connection with.." and other lexico-syntactical forms emphasizing the logical connection and interdependence of consecutive parts of the discourse.

Official style, or the style of official documents, is the most conservative one. It preserves cast-iron forms of structuring and uses syntactical constructions and words long known as archaic and not observed anywhere else. Addressing documents and official letters, signing them, expressing the reasons and considerations leading to the subject of the document (letter) - all this is strictly regulated both lexically and syntactically. All emotiveness and subjective modality are completely banned out of this style.

Publicist style is a perfect example of the historical changeability of stylistic differentiation of discourses. In ancient Greece, e.g., it was practiced mainly in its oral form and was best known as oratoric style, within which views and sentiments of the addresser (orator) found their expression. Nowadays political, ideological, ethical, social beliefs and statements of the addresser are prevailingly expressed in the written form, which was labelled publicist in accordance with the name of the corresponding genre and its practitioners. Publicist style is famous for its explicit pragmatic function of persuasion directed at influencing the reader and shaping his views, in accordance with the argumentation of the author. Correspondingly, we find in publicist style a blend of the rigorous logical reasoning, reflecting the objective state of things, and a strong subjectivity reflecting the author's personal feelings and emotions towards the discussed subject.

Newspaper style, as it is evident from its name, is found in newspapers. You should not conclude though that everything published in a newspaper should be referred to the newspaper style. The paper contains vastly varying materials, some of them being publicist essays, some - feature articles, some - scientific reviews, some - official stock-exchange accounts etc., so that a daily (weekly) newspaper also offers a variety of styles. When we mention "newspaper style", we mean informative materials, characteristic of newspaper only and not found in other publications. To attract the reader's attention to the news, special graphical means are used. British and American papers are notorious for the change of type, specific headlines, space ordering, etc. We find here a large proportion of dates and personal names of countries, territories, institutions, individuals. To achieve the effect of objectivity and impartiality in rendering some fact or event, most of the newspaper information is published anonymously, without the name of the newsman who supplied it, with little or no subjective modality. But the position and attitude of the paper, nonetheless, become clear from the choice not only of the subject-matter but also of the words denoting international or domestic issues.

Belles-lettres style, or the style of imaginative literature may be called the richest register of communication: besides its own language means which are not used in any other sphere of communication, belles-lettres style makes ample use of other styles too, for in numerous works of literary art we find elements of scientific, official and other functional types of speech. Besides informative and persuasive functions, also found in other functional styles, the belles-lettres style has a unique task to impress the reader aesthetically. The form becomes meaningful and carries additional information as you must have seen from previous chapters. Boundless possibilities of expressing one's thoughts and feelings make the belles-lettres style a highly attractive field of research for a linguist.

Speaking of belles-lettres style most scholars almost automatically refer to it prose works, regarding poetry the domain of a special poetic style. Viewed diachronically this opinion does not seem controversial, for poems of previous centuries, indeed, adhered to a very specific vocabulary and its ordering. But poetry of the twentieth century does not show much difference from prose vocabulary, its subjects are no more limited to several specific "poetic" fields but widely cover practically all spheres of existence of contemporary man. So it is hardly relevant to speak of a separate poetic style in reference to contemporary literature.

Finishing this brief outline of functional styles observed in modern English, it is necessary to stress, again, two points. The first one concerns the dichotomy - written:: oral, which is not synonymous to the dichotomy literary:: colloquial, the former opposition meaning the form of presentation, the latter - the choice of language means. There are colloquial messages in the written form (such as personal letters, informal notes, diaries and journals) and vice versa: we have examples of literary discourses in the oral form (as in a recital, lecture, report, paper read at a conference etc.).

The second point deals with the flexibility of style boundaries: the borders within which a style presumably functions are not rigid and allow various degrees of overlapping and melting into each other. It is not accidental that rather often we speak of intermediate cases such as the popular scientific style which combines the features of scientific and belles-lettres styles, or the style of new journalism which is a combination of publicist, newspaper and belles-lettres styles etc.

  1. Word combinations as a complex equivalent of a word. The concept of freedom of word-combinations (colligations and collocations). Types of syntactic bond on the level of word-combinations (agreement, government, parataxis).

    Collocation

The tendency for lexical words to occur together is called collocation, e.g. a vivid imagination, perform an analysis, deliver a speech, a problem child, rotten lover. But not all co-occurring items can be counted as collocations. The following are not collocations:

Ø       Multi-word lexemes are not collocations, e.g. phrasal verbs, compound nouns

Ø       Colligation e.g. rely on, wait for, crowd of, cant help + -ing,

Ø       Lexical bundles e.g. I dont know, at the time of writing, it is interesting to note that, to be taken into a account

Ø       Fixed phrases may be considered an extended collocation: e.g. rather you than me, if youve got the energy, not on your life, alls well that ends well, under the weather, the nine oclock news, not for love (n)or money, as far as Im concerned, 

Collocation is a major issue in current linguistic thinking and its applications to language learning and translation, in particular. This is partly because a sound knowledge of collocations brings language production closer to native speaker norms. Firth said in 1957 that you know a word by the company it keeps. For Cobuild�s purposes here, and on their Collocations CD, the company a word keeps is specified within four words to the left or right of the keyword (or node). In other concordancing programmes you can control this range.

By subordination, two types of syntactic units are formed—word combinations and complex sentences. The word in a word combination that determines the linkage by virtue of its grammatical, word-formational, or lexical properties is the main word; the word that realizes the linkage in some prescribed form is the dependent word. Determinative, circumstantial, objective, and other types of syntactic relationships may exist between the units.

In Russian, the basic types of subordination are agreement, government, and parataxis. Indicators of subordination are case endings (sometimes with prepositions) or, as in adverbs, the invariability itself of words. Supplementary means of subordination are intonation and word order. Subordination may be strong and manifested of necessity (as in chitat’ knigu,“to read a book”; s”ekhat’ s gory,“to descend from the mountain”) or weak (as in the agreement in khoroshaia kniga,“a good book”). From a lexical standpoint, subordination may be free, limited, or, in phraseology, closed. In a complex sentence, subordination acts as the link between the main clause and subordinate clause. Indicators include subordinating conjunctions, relative pronouns, tense and mood forms of the verb-predicate in the subordinate clause, and word order. In cases of mutual subordination, there is an indicator of subordination in both clauses. As a grammatically expressed relationship of dependency, subordination stands in contrast to coordination.

Types of Syntactic Relations

One of the most important problems of syntax is the classification and criteria of

distinguishing of different types of syntactical connection.

L. Barkhudarov (3) distinguishes three basic types of syntactical bond: subordination, co-ordination,

predication.

Subordination implies the relation of head-word and adjunct-word, as e.g. a tall boy, a red pen and so on.

The criteria for identification of head-word and adjunct is the substitution test. Example:

1) A tall boy came in.

2) A boy came in.

3) Tall came in.

This shows that the head-word is "a boy" while "tall" is adjunct, since the sentence (3) is

unmarked from the English language view point. While sentence (2) is marked as it has an invariant meaning with the sentence (1).

Co-ordination is shown either by word-order only, or by the use of form-words:

4) Pens and pencils were purchased.

5) Pens were purchased.

6) Pencils were purchased.

Since both (5), (6) sentences show identical meaning we may say that these two words are independent: coordination is proved.

Predication is the connection between the subject and the predicate of a sentence. In predication none of the components can be omitted which is the characteristic feature of this type of connection, as e.g.

7) He came ...

8) *He ...

9) * ... came or

10) I knew he had come

11) * I knew he

12) * I knew had come

Sentences (8), (9) and (11), (12) are unmarked ones.

H. Sweet (42) distinguishes two types of relations between words: subordination, coordination.

Subordination is divided in its turn into concord when head and adjunct words have alike inflection, as it is in phrases this pen or these pens: and government when a word assumes a certain grammatical form through being associated with another word:

13) I see him, here "him" is in the objective case-form. The transitive verbs require the personal

pronouns in this case.

14) I thought of him. “him” in this sentence is governed by the preposition “of”. Thus, “see” and

“of” are the words that governs while “him” is a governed word.

B. Ilyish (15) also distinguishes two types of relations between words: agree ment by which he means "a

method of expressing a syntactical relationship, which consists in making the subordinate word take a form similar to that of the word to which it is subordinated". Further he states: "the sphere of agreement in Modern English is extremely small. It is restricted to two pronouns-this and that ..." government ("we understand the use of a certain

form of the subordinate word required by its head word, but not coinciding with the form of the head word itself-that is the difference between agreement and government") e.g. Whom do you see

This approach is very close to Sweet's conception.

E. Kruisinga (36) considers two types of word-groups: close and loose.

I. Close group - when one of the members is syntactically the leading element of the group. There may be verb groups like running quickly, to hear a noise and nouns groups: King Edward, my book

II. Loose group - when each element is comparatively independent of the other members: men and woman; strict but just and so on.

Thus, if we choose the terms suggested by Barkhudarov L.S., then we may say all grammarians mentioned here are unanimous as to the existence in English the subordination and coordination bonds. In addition to these two

41

bonds Barkhudarov adds the predication. So when speaking on the types of syntactic connections in English we shall mean the three bonds mentioned.

As one can see that when speaking about syntactic relations between words we mention the terms

coordination, subordination, predication, agreement and government. It seems that it is very important to

differenciate the first three terms (coordination, subordination and predication) from the terms agreement and government, because the first three terms define the types of syntactical relations from the standpoint of dependence of the components while the second ones define the syntactic relations from the point of view of the correspondence of the grammatical forms of their components. Agreement and government deals with only subordination and has nothing to do with coordination and predication. Besides agreement and government there is one more type of syntactical relations which may be called collocation when head and adjunct words are connected with each-other not by formal grammatical means (as it is the case with agreement and government but by means of mere collocation, by the order of words and by their meaning as for example: fast food, great day, sat silently and so on).

Parataxis (from Greek for 'act of placing side by side'; fr. para, beside + tassein, to arrange; contrasted to syntaxis) is a literary technique, in writing or speaking, that favors short, simple sentences, without the use of coordinating or subordinating conjunctions. It can be contrasted with hypotaxis.[1]

Parataxis may be considered from three points of view:

  • the psychological aspect,

  • the linguistic means to express the paratactic relation,

  • and the resulting sentence structure.

The underlying idea, important for understanding of the parataxis is that in a connected discourse the complete independence of the consecutive sentences rarely exists. This observation is captured in the expression "train of thought".[2] Consider the following:

  • Sun was shining bright. We went for a walk.

  • Sun was shining bright; we went for a walk.

  • Sun was shining bright, and we went for a walk.

  • Sun was shining bright, so we went for a walk.

In the first example, the two sentences are independent expressions, while the last is that of dependence. However the connection of thought in the first examples is just as real as in the last ones, where it is explicitly expressed via the syntax of subordination. In fact, the putting side by side (without any indication of a separation, e.g., of a pause) of two totally nonrelated sentences usually startles the listeners, who try to figure out whether the train of thought was lost for them. This arrangement is either an indication of a mental disorder of the narrator or of humor (similar to garden path sentence).[2]

In spoken language, this continuance from sentence to sentence is supported by intonation and timing (rhythm, pause). While details may differ among different languages and cultures, generally similar musicality and shortness of pauses indicate the continuation, while the change of tone and longer pause generally indicate the transition to another connected group of ideas.

5. Multiple sentences: compound and complex sentences. Coordination and subordination.

There are two principal types of composite sentences: complex and compound. In compound sentences, the clauses are connected on the basis of coordinative connections (parataxis); by coordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically equal rank, i.e. equipotently (cf. equipotent, or coordinative phrases; see Unit 19). In complex sentences, the clauses are united on the basis of subordinative connections (hypotaxis); by subordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically unequal rank, one of which dominates another (cf. dominational, or subordinative phrases; see Unit 19). In terms of the positional structure of the sentence; this means that by subordination one of the clauses (subordinate) is placed in a notional position of the other (principal). This structural characteristic has an essential semantic implication: a subordinate clause, however important the information rendered by it might be for the whole communication, presents it as naturally supplementing the information in the principal clause, cf.: This is the issue I planned to discuss with you. As for coordinated clauses, their equality in rank is expressed above all in each sequential clause explicitly corresponding to a new effort of thought, which can be introduced by the purely copulative conjunction and or the adversative conjunction but, cf.: I want to discuss something with you, but we can talk about it later. The sequential clause in a compound sentence is usually rigidly fixed and refers to the whole of the leading clause, whereas the subordinate clause in a complex sentence usually refers to one notional constituent in the principal clause and can vary positionally  (as in the examples above).

Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]