Follow-Up Work

1.Comment on the function performed by the absence of the article and syntactic organization of sentences in the contexts below:

a) Boy loses girl, boy wins her back, boy loses her again and is killed in his pool. F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic Jazz Age tragedy once again makes a somewhat rocky transition from page to screen in this A&E production starring Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino as the feckless Daisy. This version has Paul Rudd (the stepbrother who got the girl in Clueless) doing the honors as narrator Nick, who reintroduces his married cousin to his lavish-party-throwing neighbor Gatsby. Toby Stephens captures the heartbreaking single-mindedness of Gatsby, although not once does the phrase "old sport" seem to fall naturally from his lips. Director Robert Markowitz uses flashbacks of Daisy and Gatsby's prewar courtship in an attempt to explain their reckless relationship, but they do little more than slow the pace of an already leisurely 93 minutes. The costumes and sets are opulent, however, and Montreal substitutes nicely for Long Island. (Kimberly Heinrichs - This text refers to the VHS Tape edition.)

b) In Meryton they parted; the two youngest repaired to the lodgings of one of the officers' wives, and Elizabeth continued her walk alone, crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity, and finding herself at last within view of the house, with weary ancles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise. (J. Austen)

c) “Millie, you know how to light a fire. Garnet and I will be collecting cups and things. When that scoundrel Beale arrives I shall tear him limb from limb. Deserting us like this! (P.G. Wodehouse)

d) He couldn’t sleep on the floor of the ravine, for water was running there, so he looked for somewhere dry. He’d passed the cave without seeing it, when a sound drew him back, knife in hand. (L. Davidson)

e) ‘It isn’t late,’ he said. Nero loped into the room behind Luke and Tiger, on the window ledge, stiffened and arched his back.

‘Oh dear!’ Rosie’s gaze jerked apprehensively from dog to cat. She expected a tooth-and-claw combat any minute and was in an agony of indecision, which animal to intercept…

‘Hold on,’ said Luke as the two animals eyed each other… It was almost as though they were assessing each other. At any rate they weren’t fighting and Luke said, ‘They’ll learn to live together.’

Dog and cat. So they might, with supervision. (J. Donnelly)

f) She walked back through the village, past the church that had stood for a thousand years, past the inn where they said Shakespeare had roistered with friends when he was young and more poacher than poet, past old cottages and new houses. (J. Donnelly)

g) Of course, she was exhausted, body and mind had to be vulnerable and yielding…. She was going to be grateful when she was herself again, but she still snapped, crossly and ungraciously, ‘Stop treating me like a child!’ (J. Donnelly)

h) She ordered her fish unfilleted. Delicately and discreetly she parted flesh from bone. (F. Weldon)

i) “Emma” is the sophisticated comedy of manners. It records the progress of Highbury heiress Emma Woodhouse toward the marriage which will integrate her into the village’s gentry community. J. Austen develops the language of realism to anatomize, with wicked irony, the hierarchies of class and gender in a period when market relations were developing and a woman’s place was being defined as wife and mother within the particular family. (L. Sage)

2. Compare the stylistic functioning of the articles and their functional-stylistic uses. Give examples of your own.