17. Stylistics of sequences

The subject matter of this branch is the stylistic value of syntagmatic chains (linear combinations). The stylistics of sequences (or syntagmatic stylistics) treats of the functions of co-occurrence of identical, different, or contrastive (opposite) linguistic units. By 'units' are meant discrete constituents at any level. But then, what exactly should be understood by 'co-occurrence'? What is felt as co-occurring, and what cases of co- occurrence produce no particular stylistic effect? The answer depends on what level or plane we are talking about.

Thus, the interaction of utterances (sentences) may be felt over a considerable distance. The novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser begins with the sentence "Dusk — of a summer night." The same sentence recurs at the end of the second volume of the novel: it is the opening statement of the epilogue. An attentive reader will inevitably recall the beginning of the book as soon as he comes to its conclusion.

In opposition to recurring utterances, phonetic units (sounds and sound combinations) are felt as co-occurring only within more or less short sequences: alliteration (see below) is noticeable in words adjacent or close to one another; rhyme is perceived if acoustically similar elements are separated by a few lines of verse, no more: if the distance is too great, our memory does not retain the impression of the first element, and the effect of phonetic similarity does not occur. It must not be lost sight of that the average reader (listener) pays much more attention to the sense of speech acts than their phonetic aspect.

As in the first part, here, too, the treatment of stylistic problems is arranged according to the structural levels (from the phonemic upwards). Semasiology concludes the discussion.

11. PHONETICS OF SEQUENCES (SYNTAGMATIC PHONETICS)

This part of stylistics deals with prosody and interaction of speech sounds in sequences.

The term 'prosody', denotes general suprasegmental characteristics of speech (tonality, length, force, tempo, and, especially, the alternation of stressed and unstressed elements — rhythm).

The number of prosodic variants (intonational treatment) of any se- quence (phrase, sentence, and so on) is theoretically unlimited.

As for interaction of speech sounds, of considerable importance is the recurrence of the same consonant ('alliteration') or the same vowel ('assonance').

Alliteration. denotes recurrence of an initial consonant in two or more words which either follow one another, or appear close enough to be noticeable. Alliteration is widely used in English — more often than in other languages (Russian, for one). We can see it in poetry and in prose, very often in titles of books, in slogans, and in set phrases.

(Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austin). Short story titles: The Pimienta Pancakes, The Clarion Call, The Last Leaf, Retrieved Reformation (O. Henry).

The important role of alliteration in English is due (at least partially) to the fact that words in Old English were mostly stressed on the first syllable.

Assonance. This term is employed to signify recurrence of stressed vowels. Ex: lines from The Raven by Edgar Allan Рое:”...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 Lenore?

Assonance here consists in the recurrence of the diphthong [ei], which makes not only inner rhymes (laden — Aiden — maiden ), but also occurs in the non-rhyming words: angels and name.

Paronomasia. 'Paronyms' are words similar (though not identical) in sound, but different in meaning. Co-occurrence of paronyms is called 'paronomasia'. Phonetically, paronomasia produces stylistic effects analogous to those of alliteration and assonance. The words raven and never in Poe's renowned poem (And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting),

Rhythm and metre. The flow of speech presents an alternation of stressed and unstressed elements (syllables). The pattern of interchange of strong and weak segments is called rhythm.

If there is no regularity, no stable recurrence of stressed and un- stressed segments, the text we perceive is an example of prose. If, rises and falls (strengthenings and weakenings) recur peri- odically at equal intervals, the text is classed as poetry (even if it is poor and primitive).

There can be no other way of distinguishing between prose and poetry. The smallest re- current segment of the line, consisting of one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed ones is called the 'foot'.

A foot of two syllables has either the first or the second syllable stressed; a foot of three syllables has either the first, the second, or the third syllable stressed. Thus we have two disyllabic varieties of feet and three trisyllabic ones — five in all.

The structure of the foot determines the metre, i.e. the type of poetic rhythm of the line. Disyllabic metres are trochee and iambus; trisyllabic are dactyl, amphibrach and anapaest.

Disyllabic metres:

1. Trochee. The foot consists of two syllables; the first is stressed: ^; duty, evening, honey,pretty

2. Iambus. Two syllables. The first is unstressed: u⁷. Examples of iambic words: mistake, prepare, enjoy, behind, again, etc.

Trisyllabic metres:

3. Dactyl. The stress is upon the first syllable; the subsequent two are unstressed: ^;uu. Examples of dactylic words: wonderful, beautiful, certainly, dignity, etc.

4. Amphibrach. The stress falls on the second (medial) syllable of the foot; the first and the last are unstressed: u'u. Examples: umbrella, returning, continue, pretending, etc.

5. Anapaest. The last (third) syllable is stressed: uu'. Examples: understand, interfere, disagree, etc.

Accented verse. This is a type of verse in which only the number of stresses in a line is taken into account. The number of syllables and the type of the feet is irrelevant. Ex “Work! Work! Work!”

Finally, there are poets who reject both metrical patterns and rhyme. When written or printed, their poems resemble regular verse only because of the shortness of the lines.

Rhyme. This is the second feature (after rhythm) distinguishing verse from prose.

1. Rhymes in words ending with a stressed syllable (i.e. monosyllabic rhymes) are called male (masculine, or single) rhymes:

dreams — streams

obey - away understand — hand

2. Rhymes in words (or word combinations) with the last syllable unstressed are female (feminine, or double) rhymes:

duty - beauty

20. Chapter И. MORPHOLOGY OF SEQUENCES (SYNTAGMATIC MORPHOLOGY)

The stylistic value of types of co-occurring morphemes and mor- phological meanings has not yet been thoroughly investigated, although the importance of such research would be perfectly clear. The present chapter, therefore, contains only a few remarks showing the general di- rection of stylistic research.

The tense forms of the verb, for instance, could be studied to find out the way past actions are depicted in various types of narrative. The learner Is expected to know from the course of elementary grammar the so-called 'historical present', i.e. the use of present-tense forms to express actions which took place in the past. But grammarians hardly ever mention the fact that the use of the 'historical present' (or 'praesens historicum') is considerably more typical of Russian than of English. In English, however, there are cases of linguistic incompetence of the speaker; present tense forms are used indiscriminately, along with those of the past tense, because the speaker does not feel any difference between the forms he came and he come. On the whole, present tense forms, being temporarily indefinite ("omnitemporal"), maybe used instead of the past tense forms, i.e. may express past actions (not to speak of future actions, which are often expressed by present tense forms in any case).

As regards non-verbal (nominal or adjectival) forms, the general requirement of good taste is to abstain from repeating the same mor- phemes or the same parts of speech (except in cases when it is done on purpose for the sake of emphasis). Generally, it is advisable to avoid imy superfluous repetition of forms or meanings. Thus, if an utterance

contains the inflectional genitive ('possessive case') Shakespeare's, th following utterance is to have a varying form of the same (or nearl the same) meaning: of Shakespeare. In a further utterance the sam relation may be rendered by an adjectival form Shakespearian, and, finally, the speaker (writer) may have recourse to an attributive noun: Shakespeare plays.¹ In this way the so-called 'elegant variation' i achieved.

Varying the morphological means of expressing grammatical notion is based, just as in the sphere of phonetics, upon the general rule: monotonous repetition of morphemes or frequent recurrence of mor- phological meanings expressed differently, is considered a stylistic faul (provided the repetition is not used on purpose).

Other problems of syntagmatic morphology concern cases when co- occurrence is not immediately felt by the producer and the recipient. Bu the general stylistic impression always depends on the morphological structure of the text, regardless of whether the co-occurrence of constituents is obvious and directly felt by language users, or whether this impression is accounted for as a result of special calculation. The prevalence in one text of certain morphological units (say, parts of speech), coupled with a lack of other units is often the result of special comparisons of text types.

Let us take as an example the morphological confrontation of col- loquial and bookish texts. It is a well-known fact that in the types mentioned, parts of speech are represented quite differently. According to the data obtained by many researchers, colloquial texts comprise much fewer nouns and adjectives than bookish texts do; at the same time, the colloquial sublanguage is very rich in pronouns, deictic words, and also words with a very broad range of meaning (thing,place, business, affair, fact, etc.).²

In colloquial speech, participial constructions are very rare (the so- called 'Nominative Absolute' is practically never used). At the same time, emphatic particles and interjections are very widely employed in everyday intercourse (just, even, simply; oh, eh, now then, etc.).

18. Chapter HI. LEXICOLOGY OF SEQUENCES

(SYNTAGMATIC LEXICOLOGY) ¹

The subject of lexicology is known to be the vocabulary of language, and separate constituents of the vocabulary — words with their history. But if this is true, then the very problem of 'syntagmata' in lexicology is fallacious, and the term 'syntagmatic lexicology', a typical contradiction in terms.

On the other hand, since we know that lexicology deals with paradigmatic relations between words (by comparing vocabulary units with one another), there are reasons to include in lexicology the in- terrelations between words arranged syntagmatically. This seems the more reasonable as the problem 'Word and Context' is admittedly a lexicological one.

For lexicology of sequences the 'word-and-context' problem presents a number of stylistic problems — especially those connected with co-oc- currence of words of various stylistic colourings.

Results effected by collisions of stylistically different words in the text are varied and unpredictable. To find some regularity in them, we are bound to analyse every case as an individual linguistic event, taking into account the whole of its cultural and historical background. In the present chapter, however, we shall discuss only the most general obser- vations, perhaps even axiomatic ones.

Demonstrating the laws of interaction of co-occurring lexical units, we must take good care to maintain the purity of our stylistic experi- ment: the material analysed should be secure from any external influ- ence of the context. Hence we must take an utterance and, repeating it, replace every time only one word in a certain position by some other word. Let us vary the direct object of the sentence We have met this man before.

1. We have met this individual before.

2. We have met this person before.

3. We have met this chap before.

4. We have met this guy before.

It is obvious that the four varieties differ stylistically from one an- other. The first is so elevated that it is even sarcastic. The second is official-sounding. Both are higher than neutral. The third has a tinge of familiarity about it. The fourth is the lowest of all.

It may be stated that a stylistically coloured word imparts its colouring to the whole of the utterance. The words individual, person, chap, guy Surrounded by neutral words (We have met this... before) do not lose any of their stylistic qualities. On the contrary, they dominate their Surroundings. Examples 1, 2 are superneutral, 3 and 4, sub-neutral.

Unintentional lexical mixtures of all kinds result in stylistic conflicts: violations of rules produce a ludicrous effect.

Also stylistically important is lexical recurrence (reappearance of the same word in the text).

V. V. Vinogradov and I.R. Galperin single out a special variety of lexical recurrence: the so-called 'root repetition', or 'sham tautology'. It consists in using attributes of the same root with their head-words. The latter thus gets its primary sense strengthened. I.R. Galperin's examples are: To live again in the youth of the young; the dodgerest of all the dodges; a brutish brute.

A variety of root repetition is the recurrence of the same noun in different case forms, or, as regards English (with practically no case forms in nouns), in varying case-like syntactic positions: They always disliked their neighbour, their neighbour's noisy company, the very sight of their neighbour, in fact. The phenomenon is known in stylistics as 'polyptoton'. The term, as the phenomenon itself, is better known in stylistic descriptions of inflectional languages.

Lexical repetition, i.e. recurrence of a word for the sake of emphasis, can be treated as a redundancy of syntactical elements (mostly of homogeneous parts of the sentence). On the other hand, repetition of a word is co- occurrence of identical lexical units.

Lexical repetition as a means of emphasis must be further distin- guished from reappearance of a word at some distance which, however, is phort enough for this recurrence to be noticeable. Its purpose is not to imiphasize the idea, but merely to remind one of its importance to the discourse.

It is common knowledge that the insistent use of the same word throughout a text, if it is not done on purpose, betrays the stylistic in- adequacy of the writer (speaker), who cannot replace it by a synonym (see further chapter on syntagmatic semasiology) or change the construction altogether.

There are practically no rules to diagnose whether the recurrence of a word is a stylistic fault or an intentional stylistic device. Our judgement can be facilitated if we have sufficient data concerning the personality of the writer: he who generally writes good English can hardly be suspected of stylistic defects when he uses the same word several times in a paragraph. On the whole, unconscious defects and deliberate effects are closely interwoven in stylistic matters.