Than Roy no one could show a more genuine cordiality to a fellow novelist. (S.M.)

4. Than Roy no one could show a more genuine cordiality to a fellow novelist. (S.M.)

5. Such being at bottom the fact, I think it is well to leave it at that. (S M.)

6. Yet at least Mucho, the used car salesman, had believed in the cars. Maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in, Negro, Mexican, cracker, a parade seven days a week, bringing the most Godawful of trade-ins: motorized metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like, out there so naked for anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at, frame cockeyed, rusty underneath, fender repainted in a shade just off enough to depress the value, if not Mucho himself, inside smelling hopelessly of children, supermarket booze, two, sometimes three generations of cigarette smokers, or only of dust - and when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused (when so little he supposed came by that out of fear most of it had to be taken and kept) and what had simply (perhaps tragically) been lost: clipped coupons promising savings of 5 to 10 cents, trading stamps, pink flyers advertizing specials at the market, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads. Yellow Pages torn from the prione book, rags of old underwear or dresses that were already period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman, or car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a grey dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes - it made him sick to look, but he had to look (Th.P.)

7. Soldiers with their cartridges gone wandered aimlessly out of the chapparal, dragging their rifles and plunged into the brush again on the other side of the railroad, black with powder, streaked with sweat, their eyes vacantly on the ground. (J.R.)

8. Strolling up and down the Main Street, talking in little groups on the corners, lounging in and out of strike headquarters were hundreds of big strong-faced miners in their Sunday best. (J.R.)

9. I am, he thought, a part of all that I have touched and that has touched me, which having for me no existence save that I gave to it, became other than itself by being mixed with what I then was, and is now still otherwise, having fused with what I now am, which is itself a cumulation of what I have been becoming. (T.W.)

10. I like people. Not just empty streets and dead buildings. People. People. (P. A.)

11. "You know so much. Where is she?" "Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. I think she's married and quieted down." (T.C.)

12. "Jesus Christ! Look at her face!" Surprise. "Her eyes is closed!" Astonishment. "She likes it!" Amazement.

"Nobody could take my picture doing that!" Moral disgust. "Them goddam white folks!" Fascinated fear. (Wr.)

13. What courage can withstand the ever-enduring and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? (W. I.)

14. "You talk of Christianity when you are in the act of banging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense!" (B.Sh.)

15. What is the good of sitting on the throne when other fellows give all the orders? (B.Sh.)

16. And what are wars but politics

Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody? (R. Fr)

17. Father, was that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless and the dead? Was it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was it you thus baptized unto Death? (D.)

18. "Let us see the state of the case. The question is simple. The question, the usual plain, straight-forward, common-sense question. What can we do for ourself? What can we do for ourself?" (D.)

19. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one... single - more... inch... of... curve-Then his feathers raffled, he stalled and fell. (Rch. B.)

20. "Jake, will you get out!" said Magdalen. (I.M.)

21. A boy and a girt sat on stools drinking pop. An elderly man alone - someone John knew vaguely by sight - the town clerk? - sat behind an empty Coca-Cola bottle. (P. Q.)

22. What your doctor learned: biggest A.M.A. convention ever is full of medical news about remedies and treatments he may (sob!) be using on you. (M.St.)

23. The neon lights in the heart of the city flashed on and off. On and off. On. Off. On. Off. Continuously. (P. A.)

24. Bagdworthy was in seventh heaven. A murder! At Chimneys! Inspector Badgworthy in charge of the case. The police have a clue. Sensational arrest. Promotion and kudos for the afforementioned Inspector. (Ch.)

25. What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief.Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief. Doubt. (S.R.)

 

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. Comment on the length of the sentence and its stylistic relevance.

2. What do you know about one-word sentences?

3. Is there any correlation between the length and the structure of the sentence?

4. Can syntactical ambivalence be put to stylistic use?

5. What punctuation marks do you know and what is their stylistic potential?

Punctuation also specifies the communicative type of the sentence. So, as you well know, a point of interrogation marks a question and a full stop signals a statement. There are cases though when a statement is crowned with a question mark. Often this punctuation-change is combined with the change of word-order, the latter following the pattern of question. This peculiar interrogative construction which semantically remains a statement is called a rhetorical question. Unlike an ordinary question, the rhetorical question does not demand any information but serves to express the emotions of the speaker and also to call the attention of listeners. Rhetorical questions make an indispensable part of oratoric speech for they very successfully emphasize the orator's ideas. In fact the speaker knows the answer himself and gives it immediately after the question is asked. The interrogative intonation and / or punctuation draw the attention of listeners (readers) to the focus of the utterance. Rhetorical questions are also often asked in "unanswerable" cases, as when in distress or anger we resort to phrases like "What have I done to deserve..." or "What shall I do when...". The artificiality of question-form of such constructions is further stressed by exclamation marks which, alongside points of interrogation, end rhetorical questions.

The effect of the majority of syntactical stylistic devices depends on either the completeness of the structure or on the arrangement of its members. The order in which words (clauses) follow each other is of extreme importance not only for the logical coherence of the sentence but also for its connotational meanings. The following sprawling rambling sentence from E. Waugh's novel Vile Bodies, with clauses heaping one over another, testifies to the carelessness, talkativeness and emotionality of the speaker: "Well, Tony rang up Michael and told him that I'd said that William, thought Michael had written the review because of the reviews I had written of Michael's book last November, though, as a matter of fact, it was Tony himself who wrote it." (E.W.) More examples showing the validity of the syntactical pattern were shown in Exercise I on the previous page.

 One of the most prominent places among the SDs dealing with the arrangement of members of the sentence decidedly belongs to repetition. ' We have already seen the repetition of a phoneme (as in alliteration), of a morpheme (as in rhyming, or plain morphemic repetition). As a syntactical SD repetition is recurrence of the same word, word combination, phrase for two and more times. According to the place which the repeated unit occupies in a sentence (utterance), repetition is classified into several types:

1. anaphora: the beginning of two or more successive sentences (clauses) is repeated - a..., a..., a... . The main stylistic function of anaphora is hot so much to emphasize the repeated unit as to create the background textile nonrepeated unit, which, through its novelty, becomes foregrounded. The background-forming function of anaphora is also evident from the kind of words which are repeated anaphorically. Pay attention to their semantics and syntactical function in the sentence when working with Exercise II.

2. epiphora: the end of successive sentences (clauses) is repeated -...a, ...a, ...a. The main function of epiphora is to add stress to the final words of the sentence.

3 framing: the beginning of the sentence is repeated in the end, thus forming the "frame" for the non-repeated part of the sentence (utterance) - a... a. The function of framing is to elucidate the notion mentioned in the beginning of the sentence. Between two appearances of the repeated unit there comes the developing middle part of the sentence which explains and clarifies what was introduced in the beginning, so that by the time it is used for the second time its semantics is concretized and specified.

4. catch repetition (anadiplosis). the end of one clause (sentence) is repeated in the beginning of the following one -...a, a.... Specification of the semantics occurs here too, but on a 'more modest level.

5. chain repetition presents several successive anadiploses -...a, a...b, b...c, c. The effect is that of the smoothly developing logical reasoning.

6. ordinary repetition has no definite place in the sentence and the repeated unit occurs in various positions - ...a, ...a..., a.. . Ordinary repetition emphasizes both the logical and the emotional meanings of the reiterated word (phrase).

7. successive repetition is a string of closely following each other reiterated units - ...a, a, a... This is the most emphatic type of repetition which signifies the peak of emotions of the speaker.

As you must have seen from the brief description, repetition is a powerful means of emphasis. Besides, repetition adds rhythm and balance to the utterance. The latter function is the major one in parallel constructions which may be viewed as a purely syntactical type of repetition for here we deal with the reiteration of the structure of several successive sentences (clauses), and not of their lexical "flesh". True enough, parallel constructions almost always include some type of lexical repetition too, and such a convergence produces a very strong effect, foregrounding at one go logical, rhythmic, emotive and expressive aspects of the utterance.

Reversed parallelism is called chiasmus. The second part of a chiasmus is, in fact, inversion of the first construction. Thus, if the first sentence (clause) has a direct word order - SPO, the second one will have it inverted - OPS.

 

Exercise II. From the following examples yon will get a better idea of the functions of various types of repetition, and also of parallelism and chiasmus:

1. I wake up and I'm alone and I walk round Warley and I'm alone; and I talk with people and I'm alone and I look at his face when I'm home and it's dead, (J.Br.)

2. Babbitt was virtuous. He advocated, though he did not practice, the prohibition of alcohol; he praised, - though he did not obey, the laws against motor-speeding. (S.L.)

3. "To think better of it," returned the gallant Blandois, "would be to slight a lady, to slight a lady would be to be deficient in chivalry towards the sex, and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character." (D.)

4. Halfway along the righthand side of the dark brown hall was a dark brown door with a dark brown settie beside it. After I had put my hat, my gloves, my muffler and my coat on the settie we three went through the dark brown door into a darkness without any brown in it. (W.G)

5. I might as well face facts; good-bye "Susan, good-bye a big car, good-bye a: big house, good-bye power, good-bye the silly handsome drearns. (J.Br.)

6. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. (O.W.)

7. I wanted to knock over the table and hit him until my arm had no more strength in it, then give him the boot, give him the boot, give him the boot - I drew a deep breath. (J.Br.)

8. Of her father's being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure. Sure. (D.)

9. Now he understood. He understood many things. One can be a person first. A man first and then a black man or a white man. (P. A.)

10. She stopped, and seemed to catch the distant sound of knocking.

Abandoning the traveller, she hurried towards the parlour; in the passage

she assuredly did hear knocking, angry and impatient knocking, the

knocking of someone who thinks he has knocked too long. (A.B.)

11. Obviously - this is a streptococcal infection. Obviously. (W.D.)

12. And a great desire for peace, peace of no matter what kind, swept through her. (A.B.)

13. When he blinks, a parrot-like look appears, the look of some heavily blinking tropical bird. (A. M.)

14. And everywhere were people. People going into gates and coming out of gates. People staggering and falling. People fighting and cursing. (P. A.)

15. Then there was something between them. There was. There was. (Dr.)

16. He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being that didn't want to kill or be killed. So he ran away from the battle. (St.H.)

17. Failure meant poverty, poverty meant squalor, squalor led, in the final stages, to the smells and stagnation of B. Inn Alley. (D. du M.)

18. "Secret Love", "Autumn Leaves", and something whose title he missed. Supper music. Music to cook by. (U.)

19. Living is the art of loving.

Loving is the art of caring.

Caring is the art of sharing.

Sharing is the art of living. (W.H.D.)

20. I came back, shrinking from my father's money, shrinking from my father's memory: mistrustful of being forced on a mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father's intention in thrusting that marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the dear noble honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life. (D.)

21. If you know anything that is not known to others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at "all, and any reason for keeping it in your own breast, think of me, and conquer that reason and let it be known! (D.)

22. I notice that father's is a large hand, but never a heavy one when it touches me, and that father's is a rough voice but never an angry one when it speaks to me. (D.)

23. From the offers of marriage that fell to her Dona Clara, deliberately, chose the one that required her removal to Spain. so to Spain she went. (O.W.)

24. There lives at least one being who can never change - one being who would be content to devote his whole existence to your happiness - who lives but in your eyes - who breathes but in your smile - who bears the heavy burden of life itself only for you. (D.) 25. It is she, in association with whom, saving that she has been for years a main fibre of the roof of his dignity and pride, he has never had a selfish thought. It is she, whom he has loved, admired, honoured and set up for the world to respect. It is she, who, at the core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love. (D.)

 

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What is a rhetorical question?

2. What types of repetition do you know?

3. Comment on the functions of repetition which you observed in your reading.

4. Which type of repetition have you met most often? What, in your opinion, makes it so popular?

5. What constructions are called parallel?

6. Have you ever observed chiasmus? What is it?

Inversion which was briefly mentioned in the definition of chiasmus is very often used as an independent SD in which the direct word order is changed either completely so that the predicate (predicative) precedes the subject; or partially so that the object precedes the subject-predicate pair. Correspondingly, we differentiate between partial and a complete inversion.

The stylistic device of inversion should not be confused with grammatical inversion which is a norm in interrogative constructions. Stylistic inversion deals with the rearrangement of the normative word order. Questions may also be rearranged: "Your mother is at home?" asks one of the characters of J. Baldwin's novel. The inverted question presupposes the answer with more certainty than the normative one. It is . the assuredness of the speaker of the positive answer that constitutes additional information which is brought into the question by the inverted wprd order. Interrogative constructions with the direct word order may. be viewed as cases of two-step (double) inversion: direct w/o —» grammatical inversion —» direct w/o.

Still another SD dealing with the arrangement of members of the sentence is suspense - a deliberate postponement of the completion of the sentence. The term "suspense" is also used in literary criticism to denote an expectant uncertainty about the outcome of the plot. To hold the reader in suspense means to keep the final solution just out of sight. Detective and adventure stories are examples of suspense fiction. The - theme, that which is known, and the rheme, that which is new, of the sentence are distanced from each other and the new information is withheld, creating the tension of expectation. Technically, suspense is organized with the help of embedded clauses (homogeneous members) separating the predicate from the subject and introducing less important facts and details first, while the expected information of major importance is reserved till the end of the sentence (utterance).

A specific arrangement of sentence members is observed in detachment, a stylistic device based on singling out a secondary member of the sentence with the help of punctuation (intonation). The word-order here is not violated, but secondary members obtain their own stress and intonation because they are detached from the rest of the sentence by commas, dashes or even a full stop as in the following cases: "He had been nearly killed, ingloriously, in a jeep accident." (I.Sh.) "I have to beg you for money. Daily." (S.L.) Both "ingloriously" and "daily" remain adverbial modifiers, occupy their proper normative places, following the modified verbs, but - due to detachment and the ensuing additional pause and stress - are foregrounded into the focus of the reader's attention.

 

Exercise III. Find and analyse cases of detachment, suspense and inversion. Comment on the structure and functions of each:

1. She narrowed her eyes a trifle at me and said I looked exactly like Celia Briganza's boy. Around the mouth. (S.)

2. He observes it all with a keen quick glance, not unkindly, and full rather of amusement than of censure. (V.W.)

3. She was crazy about you. In the beginning. (R.W.)

4. How many pictures of new journeys over pleasant country, of resting places under the free broad sky, of rambles in the fields and woods, and paths not often trodden-how many tones of that one well-remembered voice, how many glimpses of the form, the fluttering dress, the hair that waved so gaily in the wind - how many visions of what had been and what he hoped was yet to be - rose up before him in the old, dull, silent church! (D.)

5. It Was not the monotonous days uncheckered by variety anduncheered by pleasant companionship, it was not the dark dreary eveningsor the long solitary nights, it was not the absence of every slight and easypleasure for which young hearts beat high or the knowing nothing ofchildhood but its weakness and its easily wounded spirit, that had wrungsuch tears from Nell. (D.)

6. Of all my old association, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me. (D.)

7. Corruption could not spread with so much success, though reduced into a system, and though some ministers, with equal impudence and folly, avowed it by themselves and their advocates, to be the principal expedient by which they governed; if a long and almost unobserved progression of causes and effects did not prepare the conjuncture. (Bol.)

8. I have been accused of bad taste. This has disturbed me not so much for my own sake (since I am used to the slights and arrows of outrageous fortune) as for the sake of criticism in general. (S.M.)

9. On, on he wandered, night and day, beneath the blazing sun, and the cold pale moon; through the dry heat of noon, and the damp cold of night; in the grey light of morn, and the red, glare of eve. (D.)

10. Benny Collan, a respected guy, Benny Collan wants to marry her. An agent could ask for more? (T.C.)

11. Women are not made for attack. Wait they must. (J. C.)

12. Out came the chase - in went the horses - on sprang the boys -in got the travellers. (D.)

13. Then he said: "You think it's so? She was mixed up in this lousy business?" (J.B.)

14. And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an enlargement of all the hamlets which they had been passing. Only to the eyes of a Kennicot was it exceptional. (S.L.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What syntactical stylistic devices dealing with arrangement of sentence members do you remember?

2. What types of inversion do you know? Which of them have you met more often and why?

3. What is suspense, how is it arranged and what is Us function?

4. What do you know about detachment and punctuation used with detached sentence members?

5. What sentence members are most often detached?

6. Find in your reading material cases of all syntactical SDs based on the re-arrangement or intended specific arrangement of sentence members.

The second, somewhat smaller, group of syntactical SDs deals not so much with specificities of the arrangement as with the completeness of sentence-structure. The most prominent place here belongs to ellipsis, or deliberate omission of at least one member of the sentence, as in the famous quotation from Macbeth: What! all my pretty chickens and their dam // at one fell swoop?

In contemporary prose ellipsis is mainly used in dialogue where it is consciously employed by the author to reflect the natural omissions characterizing oral colloquial speech. Often ellipsis is met close to dialogue, in author's introductory remarks commenting the speech of the characters. Elliptical remarks in prose resemble stage directions in drama. Both save only the most vital information letting out those bits of it which can be easily reassembled from the situation. It is the situational nature of our everyday speech which heavily relies on both speakers' awareness of the conditions and details of the communication act that promotes normative colloquial omissions. Imitation of these oral colloquial norms is created by the author through ellipsis, with the main function of achieving the authenticity and plausibility of fictitious dialogue.

Ellipsis is the basis of the so-called telegraphic style, in which connectives and redundant words are left out. In the early twenties British railways had an inscription over luggage racks in the carriages: "The use of this rack for heavy and bulky packages involves risk of injury to passengers and is prohibited." Forty years later it was reduced to the elliptical: "For light articles only." The same progress from full completed messages to clipped phrases was made in drivers' directions: "Please drive slowly" "Drive slowly" "Slow".

The biggest contributors to the telegraphic style are one-member sentences, i.e. sentences consisting only of a nominal group, which is semantically and communicatively self-sufficient. Isolated verbs, proceeding from the ontological features of a verb as a part of speech, cannot be considered one-member sentences as they always rely on the context for their semantic fulfilment and are thus heavily ellipticized sentences. In creative prose one-member sentences are mostly used in descriptions (of nature, interior, appearance, etc.), where they produce the effect of a detailed but laconic picture foregrounding its main components; and as the background of dialogue, mentioning the emotions, attitudes, moods of the speakers.

In apokoinu constructions the omission of the pronominal (adverbial) connective creates a blend of the main and the subordinate clauses so that the predicative or the object of the first one is simultaneously used as the subject of the second one. Cf: "There was a door led into the kitchen." (Sh. A.) "He was the man killed that deer." (R.W.) The double syntactical function played by one word produces the general impression of clumsiness of speech and is used as a means of speech characteristics in dialogue, in reported speech and the type of narrative known as "entrusted" in which the author entrusts the telling of the story to an imaginary narrator who is either an observer or participant of the described events.

The last SD which promotes the incompleteness of sentence structure is break (aposiopesis). Break is also used mainly in the, dialogue or in other forms of narrative imitating spontaneous oral speech. It reflects the emotional or/and the psychological state of the speaker: a sentence may be broken because the speaker's emotions prevent him from finishing it. Another cause of the break is the desire to cut short the information with which the sentence began. In such cases there are usually special remarks by the author, indicating the intentional abruptness of the end. (See examples in Exercise IV). In many cases break is the result of the speaker's uncertainty as to what exactly he is to promise (to threaten, to beg).

To mark the break, dashes and dots are used. It is only in cast-iron structures that full stops may also appear, as in the well-known phrases "Good intentions, but", or "It depends".

Exercise IV. Discuss different types of stylistic devices dealing with the completeness of the sentence:

1. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind. (D.)

2. Malay Camp. A row of streets crossing another row of streets. Mostly narrow streets. Mostly dirty streets. Mostly dark streets. (P. A.)

3. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side. (D.)

4. A solemn silence: Mr. Pickwick humorous, the old lady serious, the fat gentleman cautious and Mr. Miller timorous. (D.)

5. He, and the falling light and dying fire, the time-worn room, the solitude, the wasted life, and gloom, were all in fellowship. Ashes, and dust, and ruin! (D.)

6. She merely looked at him weakly. The wonder of him! The beauty of love! Her desire toward him! (Dr.)

7. Ever since he was a young man, the hard life on Earth, the panic of 2130, the starvation, chaos, riot, want. Then bucking through the planets, the womanless, loveless years, the alone years. (R.Br.)

8. H. The waves, how are the waves? C.: The waves? Lead. H.: And the sun? C.: Zero.

H.: But it should be sinking. Look again. C.: Damn the sun. H.: Is it night already then? C: No.

H.: Then what is it? C: Grey! Grey! GREY! H.: Grey! Did I hear you say grey? C.: Light black. From pole to pole. (S. B.)

 9. I'm a horse doctor, animal man. Do some farming, too. Near Tulip, Texas. (T.C.)

10. "I'll go, Doll! I'll go!" This from Bead, large eyes larger than usual behind his hornrimmed glasses. (J.)

11. A black February day. Clouds hewn of ponderous timber weighing down on the earth: an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The second day of Kennicott's absence. (S.L.)

12. And we got down at the bridge. White cloudy sky, with mother-of-pearl veins. Pearl rays shooting through, green and blue-white. River roughed by a breeze. White as a new file in the distance. Fish-white streak on the smooth pin-silver upstream. Shooting new pins. (J. C.)

13. This is a story how a Baggins had an adventure. He may have lost the neighbours' respect, but he gained - well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end. (A. T.)

14. "People liked to be with her. And —" She paused again, " - and she was crazy about you." (R.W.)

15. What I had seen of Patti didn't really contradict Kitty's view of her: a girl who means well, but. (D.U.)

16. "He was shouting out that he'd come back, that his mother had better have the money ready for him. Or else! That is what he said: "Or else!" It was a threat." (Ch.)

17. "Listen, I'll talk to the butler over that phone and he'll know my voice. Will that pass me in or do I have to ride on your back?''

"I just work here," he said softly. "If I didn't —" he let the rest hang in the air, and kept on smiling. (R.Ch.)

18. I told her, "You've always acted the free woman, you've never let any thing stop you from —" He checks himself, goes on hurriedly. "That made her sore." (J.O'H.)

19. "Well, they'll get a chance now to show -" Hastily: "I don't mean - But let's forget that." (O'N.)

20. And it was unlikely that anyone would trouble to look there -until - until - well. (Dr.)

21. There was no breeze came through the door. (H.)

22. I love Nevada. Why, they don't even have mealtimes here. I never met so many people didn't own a watch. (A. M.)

23. Go down to Lord and Taylors or someplace and get yourself something real nic&to impress the boy invited you. (J. K.)

24. There was a whisper in my family that it was love drove him out and not love of the wife he married. (J. St.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What syntactical stylistic devices deal with the completeness of sentence-structure?

2. What types of ellipses do you know and where is each of them used predominantly?

3. What member of the sentence represents "one-member sentences"?

4. Where are apokoinu constructions used?

5. What additional information about the act of communication and its participants is conveyed by the

break?

6. What punctuation is used in the break?

7. Find examples of the above-mentioned SDs in your reading.

The arrangement of sentence members, the completeness of sentence structure necessarily involve various types of connection used within the sentence or between sentences. Repeated use of conjunctions is called polysyndeton; deliberate omission of them is, correspondingly, named asyndeton. Both polysyndeton and asyndeton, have a strong rhythmic impact. Besides, the function of polysyndeton is to strengthen the idea of equal logical (emotive) importance of connected sentences, while asyndeton, cutting off connecting words, helps to create the effect of terse, energetic, active prose.

These two types of connection are more characteristic of the author's speech. The third type - attachment (gap-sentence, leaning sentence, link) on the contrary,' is mainly to be found in various representations of the voice of the personage - dialogue, reported speech, entrusted narrative. In the attachment the second part of the utterance is separated from the first one by a full stop though their semantic and grammatical ties remain very strong. The second part appears as an afterthought and is often connected with the beginning of the utterance with the help of a conjunction, which brings the latter into the foregrounded opening position. Cf: "It wasn't his fault. It was yours. And mine. I now humbly beg you to give me the money with which to buy meals for you to eat. And hereafter do remember it: the next time I shan't beg. I shall simply starve." (S.L.); "Prison is where she belongs. And my husband agrees one thousand per cent." (T.C.)

Exercise V. Specify stylistic functions of the types of connection given below:

1. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping smelly tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women struggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again - quiet and magical. (J. St.)

2. "What sort of a place is Dufton exactly?"

"A lot of mills. And a chemical factory. And a Grammar school and a war memorial and a river that runs different colours each day. And a cinema and fourteen pubs. That's really all one can say about it." (J.Br.)

3. By the time he had got all the bottles and dishes and knives and forks and glasses and plates and spoons and things piled up on big trays, he was getting very hot, and red in the face, and annoyed. (A. T.)

4. Bella soaped his face and rubbed his face, and soaped his hands and rubbed his hands, and splashed him, and rinsed him, and towelled him, until he was as red as beetroot. (D.)

5. Secretly, after the nightfall, he visited the home of the Prime Minister. He examined it from top to bottom. He measured all the doors and windows. He took up the flooring. He inspected the plumbing. He examined the furniture. He found nothing. (L.)

6. With these hurried words Mr. Bob Sawyer pushed the postboy on one side, jerked his friend into the vehicle, slammed the door, put up the steps, wafered the bill on the street-door, locked it, put the key into his pocket, jumped into the dickey, gave the word for starting. (D.)

7. "Well, guess it's about time to turn in." He yawned, went out to look at the thermometer, slammed the door, patted her head, unbuttoned his waistcoat, yawned, wound the clock, went to look at the furnace, yawned and clumped upstairs to bed, casually scratching his thick woolen undershirt. (S.L.)

8. "Give me an example," I said quietly. "Of something that means something. In your opinion." (T.C.)

9. "I got a small apartment over the place. And, well, sometimes I stay over. In the apartment. Like the last few nights." (D.U.)

10. "He is a very deliberate, careful guy and we trust each other completely. With a few reservations." (D.U.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What types of connecting syntactical units do you know? Which of them are used to create additional information and achieve a specific effect?

2. Speak about asyndeton and its functions.

3. Discuss polysyndeton. Give some examples from your reading.

4. What is attachment? When and where is it used? Have you met it in your reading?

 

Lexico-Syntactical Stylistic Devices Antithesis.

Climax. Anticlimax. Simile. Litotes. Periphrasis

Syntactical stylistic devices add logical, emotive, expressive information to the utterance regardless of lexical meanings of sentence components. There are certain structures though, whose emphasis depends not only on the arrangement of sentence members but also on the lexico-semantic aspect of the utterance. They are known as lexico-syntactical SDs.

Antithesis is a good example of them: syntactically, antithesis is just another case of parallel constructions. But unlike parallelism, which is indifferent to the semantics of its components, the two parts of an antithesis must be semantically opposite to each other, as in the sad maxim of O.Wilde: "Some people have much to live on, and little to live for", where "much" and "little" present a pair of antonyms, supported by the ' contextual opposition of postpositions "on" and "for". Another example: "If we don't know who gains by his death we do know who loses by it." (Ch.) Here, too, we have the leading antonymous pair "gam - lose" and the supporting one, made stronger by the emphatic form of the affirmative construction - "don't know / do know".

Antithesis as a semantic opposition emphasized by its realization in similar structures, is often observed on lower levels of language hierarchy, especially on the morphemic level where two antonymous affixes create a powerful effect of contrast: "Their pre-money wives did not go together with their post-money daughters." (H.)

The main function of antithesis is to stress the heterogeneity of the described phenomenon, to show that the latter is a dialectical unity of two (or more) opposing features.

Exercise I. Discuss the semantic centres and structural peculiarities of antithesis:

1. Mrs. Nork had a large home and a small husband. (S.L.)

2. In marriage the upkeep of woman is often the downfall of man. (Ev.)

3. Don't use big words. They mean so little. (O.W.)

4. I like big parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy. (Sc.F.)

5. There is Mr. Guppy, who was at first as open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as midnight. (D.)

6. Such a scene as there was when Kit came in! Such a confusion of tongues, before the circumstances were related and the proofs disclosed! Such a dead silence when all was told! (D.)

7. Rup wished he could be swift, accurate, compassionate and stern instead of clumsy and vague and sentimental. (I.M.)

8. His coat-sleeves being a great deal too long, and his trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease in his clothes. (D.)

9. There was something eery about the apartment house, an unearthly quiet that was a combination of overcarpeting and underoccupancy. (H.St.)

10. It is safer to be married to the man you can be happy with than to the man you cannot be happy without. (E.)

11. Then came running down stairs a gentleman with whiskers, out of breath. (D.)

12. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. (D.)

13. Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron, and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses and little crowded groceries and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said "Whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches", by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men" and he would have meant the same thing. (J. St.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. Comment on linguistic properties of sentences which are foregrounded in lexico-syntactical stylistic devices.

2. What do you know about antithesis? Why is it viewed separately from parallel constructions?

3. Have you ever met, in your home-reading, cases of antithesis in which the structure of a word was also used in the creation of the SD?

Another type of semantically complicated parallelism is presented by climax, in which each next word combination (clause, sentence) is logically more important or emotionally stronger and more explicit: "Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!" (D.) "I am firm, thou art obstinate, he is pig-headed." (B.Ch.) If to create antithesis we use antonyms (or their contextual equivalents), in climax we deal with strings of synonyms or at least semantically related words belonging to the same thematic group.

The negative form of the structures participating in the formation of climax reverses the order in which climax-components are used, as in the following examples: "No tree, no shrub, no blade of grass that was not owned." (G.) It is the absence of substance or quality that is being emphasized by the negative form of the climax, this is why relative synonyms are arranged not in the ascending but in the descending order as to the expressed quality or quantity. Cf.: "Be careful," said Mr. Jingle. "Not a look." "Not a wink," said Mr. Tupman. "Not a syllable. Not a whisper." (D.)

Proceeding from the nature of the emphasized phenomenon it is possible to speak of logical, emotive or quantitative types of climax. The most widely spread model of climax is a three-step construction, in which intensification of logical importance, of emotion or quantity (size, dimensions) is gradually rising Step by step. In emotive climax though, we rather often meet a two-step structure, in which the second part repeats the first one and is further strengthened by an intensifier, as in the following instances: "He was so helpless, so very helpless." (W.D.) "She felt better, immensely better." (W.D.) "I have been so unhappy here, so very very unhappy." (D.)

Climax suddenly interrupted by an unexpected turn of the thought which defeats expectations of the reader (listener) and ends in complete semantic reversal of the emphasized idea, is called anticlimax. To stress

the abruptness of the change emphatic punctuation (dash, most often) is used between the ascending and the descending parts of the anticlimax. Quite a few paradoxes are closely connected with anticlimax.

Exercise II. Indicate the type of climax. Pay attention to its structure and the semantics of its components:

1. He saw clearly that the best thing was a cover story or camouflage. As he wondered and wondered what to do, he first rejected a stop as impossible, then as improbable, then as quite dreadful. (W.G.)

2. "Is it shark?" said Brody. The possibility that he at last was going to confront the fish - the beast, the monster, the nightmare - made Brody's heart pound. (P.B.)

3. If he had got into the gubernatorial primary on his own hook, he would have taken a realistic view. But this was different. He had been called. He had been touched. He had been summoned. (R.W.)

4. We were all in аll tо one another, it was the morning of life, it was bliss, it was frenzy, it was everything else of that sort in the highest degree. (D.)

5. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside. (D.)

6. "I shall be sorry, I shall be truly sorry to leave you, my friend." (D.)

7. "Of course it's important. Incredibly, urgently, desperately important." (D.S.)

8. "I never told you about that letter Jane Crofut got from her minister when she was sick. He wrote Jane a letter and on the envelope the address was like this: Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Graver's Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America." "What's funny about it?" "But listen, it's not finished: the United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God - that's what it said on the envelope." (Th.W.)

9. "You have heard of Jefferson Brick, I see. Sir," quoth the Colonel with a smile. "England has heard of Jefferson Brick. Europe has heard of Jefferson Brick." (D.)

10. After so many kisses and promises - the lie given to her dreams, her words, the lie given to kisses, hours, days, weeks, months of unspeakable bliss. (Dr.)

11. For that one instant there was no one else in the room, in the house, in the world, besides themselves. (M.W.)

12. Fledgeby hasn't heard of anything. "No, there's not a word of news," says Lammle. "Not a particle," adds Boots. "Not an atom," chimes in Brewer. (D.)

13. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. (O.W.)

14. This was appalling - and soon forgotten. (G.)

15. He was unconsolable - for an afternoon. (G.)

16. In moments of utter crises my nerves act in the most extraordinary way. When utter disaster seems imminent, my whole being is simultaneously braced to avoid it. I size up the situation in a flash, set my teeth, contract my muscles, take a firm grip of myself, and without a tremor always do the wrong thing. (B.Sh.)

 

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. Speak about the SD of climax and its types.

2. In what way does the structure of an emotive climax differ from that of other types?

3. What can you say about the negative form of the climax?

4. What is an anticlimax?

5. Is every paradox expressed by a climax?

 A structure of three components is presented in a stylistic device extremely popular at all times - simile. Simile is an imaginative comparison of two unlike objects belonging to two different classes. The one which is compared is called the tenor, the one with which it is compared, is called the vehicle. The tenor and the vehicle form the two semantic poles of the simile, which are connected by one of the following link words "like", "as", "as though", "as like", "such as", "as...as", etc. Simile should not be confused with simple (logical, ordinary) comparison. Structurally identical, consisting of the tenor, the vehicle and the uniting formal element, they are semantically different: objects belonging to the same class are likened in a simple comparison, while in a simile we deal with the likening of objects belonging to two different classes. So, "She is like her mother" is a simple comparison, used to state an evident fact. "She is like a rose" is a simile used for purposes of expressive evaluation, emotive explanation, highly individual description.

The tenor and the vehicle may be expressed in a brief "nucleus" manner, as in the above example, or may be extended. This last case of sustained expression of likeness is known as epic, or Homeric simile.

If you remember, in a metaphor two unlike objects (actions, phenomena) were identified on the grounds of possessing one common characteristic. In a simile two objects are compared on the grounds of similarity of some quality. This feature which is called foundation of a simile, may be explicitly mentioned as in: "He stood immovable like a rock in a torrent" (J.R.), or "His muscles are hard as rock". (T.C.) You see that the "rock" which is the vehicle of two different similes offers two different qualities as their foundation - "immovable" in the first case, and "hard" in the second. When the foundation is not explicitly named, the simile is considered to be richer in possible associations, because the fact that a phenomenon can be qualified in multiple and varying ways allows attaching at least some of many qualities to the object of comparison. So "the rose" of the previous case allows to simultaneously foreground such features as "fresh, beautiful, fragrant, attractive", etc. Sometimes the foundation of the simile is not quite clear from the context, and the author supplies it with a key, where he explains which similarities led him to liken two different entities, and which in fact is an extended and detailed foundation. Cf.: "The conversations she began behaved like green logs: they fumed but would not fire." (T.C.)

A simile, often repeated, becomes trite and adds to the stock of language phraseology. Most of trite similes have the foundation mentioned and conjunctions "as", "as...as" used as connectives. Cf.: "as brisk as a bee", "as strong as a horse", "as live as a bird" and many many more.

Similes in which the link between the tenor and the vehicle is expressed by notional verbs such as "to resemble", "to seem", "to recollect", "to remember", "to look like", "to appear", etc. are called disguised, because the realization of the comparison is somewhat suspended, as the likeness between the objects seems less evident. Cf.: "His strangely taut, full-width grin made his large teeth resemble a dazzling miniature piano keyboard in the green light." (J.) Orf "The ball appeared to the batter to be a slow spinning planet looming toward the earth." (В. М.)

 

Exercise III. Discuss the following cases of simile. Pay attention to the semantics of the tenor and the vehicle, to the briefer sustained manner of their presentation. Indicate the foundation of the simile, both explicit and implicit. Find examples of disguised similes, do not miss the link word joining the two parts of the structure:

1. The menu was rather less than a panorama, indeed, it was as repetitious as a snore. (O.N.)

2. The topic of the Younger Generation spread through the company like a yawn. (E.W.)

3. Penny-in-the-slot machines stood there like so many vacant faces, their dials glowing and flickering - for nobody. (B.N.)

4. As wet as a fish - as dry as a bone;

As live as a bird - as dead as a stone; As plump as a partridge - as crafty as a rat;

As strong as a horse - as weak as a cat; As hard as a flint - as soft as a mole; As white as a lily - as black as coal; As plain as a pike - as rough as a bear; As tight as a dram - as free as the air; As heavy as lead - as light as a feather; As steady as time - uncertain as weather; As hot as an oven - as cold as a frog; As gay as a lark - as sick as a dog; As savage as a tiger - as mild as ц dove; As stiff as a poker - as limp as a glove; As blind as a bat - as deaf as a post; As cool as a cucumber - as warm as toast; As flat as a flounder - as round as a ball; As blunt as a hammer - as sharp as an awl; As brittle as glass - as tough as gristle; As neat as a pin - as clean as a whistle; As red as a rose - as square as a box. (O.N.)

5. She has always been as live as a bird. (R.Ch.)

6. She was obstinate as a mule, always had been, from a child. (G.)

7. Children! Breakfast is just as good as any other meal and I won't have you gobbling like wolves. (Th.W.)

8. Six o'clock still found him in indecision. He had had no appetite for lunch and the muscles of his stomach fluttered as though a flock of sparrows was beating their wings against his insides. (Wr.)

9. And the cat, released, leaped and perched on her shoulder: his tail swinging like a baton, conducting rhapsodic music. (T.C.)

10. He felt that his presence must, like a single drop of some stain, tincture the crystal liquid that was absolutely herself. (R.W.)

11. He has a round kewpie's face. He looks like an enlarged, elderly, bald edition of the village fat boy, a sly fat boy, congenitally indolent, a practical joker, a born grafter and con merchant. (O'N.)

12. You could have knocked me down with a feather when he said all those things to me. I felt just like Balaam when his ass broke into light conversation. (S.M.)

13. Two footmen leant against the walls looking as waxen as the clumps of flowers sent up that morning from hothouses in the country. (E.W.)

14. The Dorset Hotel was built in the early eighteen hundreds and my room, like many an elderly lady, looks its best in subdued light. (J.Br.)

15. For a long while - for many years in fact - he had not thought of how it was before he came to the farm. His memory of those times was like a house where no one lives and where the furniture has rotted away. But tonight it was as if lamps had been lighted through all the gloomy dead rooms. (T.C.)

16. It was an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely, naturally and unstoppably as water out of a woodland spring. (J.F.)

17. He ached from head to foot, all zones of pain seemingly interdependent. He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective. (S.)

18. Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all nor for how long she will stay. (Gr.M.)

19. You're like the East, Dinny. One loves it at first sight or not at all and one never knows it any better. (G.)

20. He felt like an old book: spine defective, covers dull, slight foxing, fly missing, rather shaken copy. (J.Br.)

21. Susan at her piano lesson, playing that thing of Scarlatti's. The sort of music, it struck him, that would happen if the bubbles in a magnum of champagne were to rush up rhythmically and as they reached the surface, burst into sound as dry and tangy as the wine from whose depth they had arisen. The simile pleased him so much. (A.H.)

22. There was no moon, a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes, stirred in the still, warm air. (G.)

23. There are in every large chicken-yard a number of old and indignant hens who resemble Mrs. Bogart and when they are served at Sunday noon dinner, as fricasseed chicken with thick dumplings, they keep up the resemblance. (S.L.)

24. H.G.Wells r.eminded her of the rice paddies in her native California. Acres and acres of shiny water but never more than two inches deep. (A.H.)

25. On the wall hung an amateur oil painting of what appeared to be a blind man's conception of fourteen whistling swan landing simultaneously in the Atlantic during a half-gale. (Jn.B.)

26. Today she had begun by watching the flood. The water would crouch and heave at a big boulder fallen off the bluff-side and the red-and-white foam would fly. It reminded her of the blood-streaked foam every heave would fling out of the nostrils of a windbroke horse. (R.W.)

27. I'm not nearly hot enough to draw a word-picture that would do justice to that extraordinarily hefty crash. Try to imagine the Albert Hall falling on the Crystal Palace and you will have got the rough idea. (P.G.W.)

28. Her startled glance descended like a beam of light, and settled for a moment on the man's face. He was fortyish and rather fat, with a moustache that made her think of the yolk of an egg, and a nose that spread itself. His face had an injected redness. (W.D.)

29. Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions she had a strange resemblance to a captive owl bunched in its soft feathers against the wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her body was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel exercise, as though there were no longer any reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect. (G.)

30. Someone might have observed in him a peculiar resemblance to those plaster reproductions of the gargoyles of Notre Dame which may be seen in the shop windows of artists' colourmen. (E.W.)

31. Walser felt the strangest sensation, as if these eyes of the trapeze gymnast were a pair of sets of Chinese boxes, as if each one opened into a world into a world, an infinite plurality of worlds, and these unguessable guests exercised the strongest possible attraction, so that he felt himself trembling as if he, too, stood on an unknown threshold. (An.C.)

32. All was elegant, even sumptuous, finished with a heavy rather queasy luxury that always seemed to have grime under its fingernails, the luxury peculiar to this country. (An.C.)

 

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What is a simile and what is a simple comparison?

2. What semantic poles of a simile do you know?

3. Which of the link words have you met most often?

4. What is the foundation of the simile?

5. What is the key of the simile?

6. What is a trite simile? Give examples.

7. What is an epic simile?

8. What is a disguised simile?

9. What are the main functions of a simile?

10. Find examples of similes in your reading. State their type, structure and functions.

Litotes is a two-component structure in which two negations are joined to give a positive evaluation. Thus "not unkindly" actually means "kindly", though the positive effect is weakened and some lack of the speaker's confidence in his statement is implied. The first component of a litotes is always the negative particle "not", while the second, always negative in semantics, varies in form from a negatively affixed word (as above) to a negative phrase.

Litotes is especially expressive when the semantic centre of the whole • structure is stylistically or/and emotionally coloured, as in the case of the following occasional creations: "Her face was not unhandsome" (A.H.) or "Her face was not unpretty". (K.K.)

The function of litotes has much in common with that of understatement - both weaken the effect of the utterance. The uniqueness of litotes lies in its specific "double negative" structure and in its weakening only the positive evaluation. The Russian term "литота" corresponds only to the English "understatement" as it has no structural or semantic limitations.

 

Exercise IV. Analyse the structure, the semantics and the functions oflitotes:

1. "To be a good actress, she must always work for the truth in what she's playing," the man said in a voice not empty of self-love. (N.M.)

2. "Yeah, what the hell," Anne said and looking at me, gave that not unsour smile. (R.W.)

3. It was not unnatural if Gilbert felt a certain embarrassment. (E. W.)

4. The idea was not totally erroneous. The thought did not displease me. (I.M.)

5. I was quiet, but not uncommunicative; reserved, but not reclusive; energetic at times, but seldom enthusiastic. (Jn.B.)

6. He had all the confidence in the world, and not without reason. (J.O'H.)

7. Kirsten said not without dignity: "Too much talking is unwise." (Ch.)

8. "No, I've had a profession and then a firm to cherish," said Ravenstreet, not without bitterness. (P.)

9. I felt I wouldn't say "no" to a cup of tea. (K.M.) 10. I wouldn't say "no" to going to the movies. (E.W.)

11. "I don't think you've been too miserable, my dear." (P.)

12. Still two weeks of success is definitely not nothing and phone calls were coming in from agents for a week. (Ph.R.)

 

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What is a litotes?

2. What is there in common between litotes and understatement?

3. Describe most frequently used structures of litotes.

Periphrasis is a very peculiar stylistic device which basically consists of using a roundabout form of expression instead of a simpler one, i.e. of using a more or less complicated syntactical structure instead of a word. Depending on the mechanism of this substitution, periphrases are classified into figurative (metonymic and metaphoric), and logical. The first group is made, in fact, of phrase-metonymies and phrase-metaphors, as you may well see from the following example: "The hospital was crowded with the surgically interesting products of the fighting in Africa" (I.Sh.) where the extended metonymy stands for "the wounded".

Logical periphrases are phrases synonymic with the words which were substituted by periphrases: "Mr. Du Pont was dressed in the conventional disguise with which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American millionaires." (M.St.) "The conventional disguise" stands here for "the suit" and "the shame of American millionaires" — for "the paunch (the belly)". Because the direct nomination of the not too elegant feature of appearance was substituted by a roundabout description this periphrasis may be also considered euphemistic, as it offers a more polite qualification instead of a coarser one.

The main function of periphrases is to convey a purely individual perception of the described object. To achieve it the generally accepted nomination of the object is replaced by the description of one of its features or qualities, which seems to the author most important for the characteristic of the object, and which thus becomes foregrounded.

The often repeated periphrases become trite and serve as universally accepted periphrastic synonyms: "the gentle / soft / weak sex" (women); "my better half (my spouse); "minions of Law" (police), etc.

 

Exercise V. Analyse the given periphrases from the viewpoint of their semantic type, structure, function and originality:

1. Gargantuan soldier named Dahoud picked Ploy by the head and scrutinized this convulsion of dungarees and despair whose feet thrashed a yard above the deck. (Th.P.)

2. His face was red, the back of his neck overflowed his collar and there had recently been published a second edition of his chin. (P.G.W.)

3. His huge leather chairs were kind to the femurs. (R.W.)

4. "But Pickwick, gentlemen, Pickwick, this ruthless destroyer of . this domestic oasis in the desert of Goswell street!" (D.)

5. He would make some money and then he would come back and marry his dream from Blackwood. (Dr.)

6. The villages were full of women who did nothing but fight against dirt and hunger and repair the effects of friction on clothes. (A.B.)

7. The habit of saluting the dawn with a bend of the elbow was a hangover from college fraternity days. (Jn.B.)

8. I took my obedient feet away from him. (W.G.)

9. I got away on my hot adolescent feet as quickly as I could. (W.G.)

10. I am thinking an unmentionable thing about your mother. (I.Sh.)

11. Jean nodded without turning and slid between two vermilion-coloured buses so that two drivers simultaneously used the same qualitative word. (G.)

12. During the previous winter I had become rather seriously ill with one of those carefully named difficulties which are the whispers of approaching age. (J. St.)

13. A child had appeared among the palms, about a hundred yards along the beach. He was a boy of perhaps six years, sturdy and fair, his clothes torn, his face covered with a sticky mess of fruit. His trousers had been lowered for an obvious purpose and had only been pulled back half-way. (W.G.)

14. When I saw him again, there were silver dollars weighting down his eyes. (T.C.)

15. She was still fat after childbirth; the destroyer of her figure sat at the head of the table. (A.B.)

16. I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. (Sc.F.)

17. "Did you see anything in Mr. Pickwick's manner and conduct towards the opposite sex to induce you to believe all this?" (D.)

18. Bill went with him and they returned with a tray of glasses, siphons and other necessaries of life. (Ch.)

19. It was the American, whom later we were to learn to know and love as the Gin Bottle King, because of a great feast of arms performed at an early hour in the morning with a container of Mr. Gordon's celebrated product as his sole weapon. (H.)

20. Jane set her bathing-suited self to washing the lunch dishes. (Jn.B.)

21. Naturally, I jumped out of the tub, and before I had thought twice, ran out into the living room in my birthday suit. (В. М.)

22. For a single instant, Birch was helpless, his blood curdling in his veins at the imminence of the danger, and his legs refusing their natural and necessary office. (T.C.)

23. The apes gathered around him and he wilted under the scrutiny of the eyes of his little cousins twice removed. (An.C.)

 

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. Speak about semantic types of periphrasis.

2. In what cases can a logical or a figurative periphrasis also be qualified as euphemistic?

3. What are the main stylistic functions of periphrases?

4. Which type of periphrasis, in your opinion, is most favoured in contemporary prose and why?

 

Exercise VI. Now, after you have been acquainted with the semantics, structures and functions of major syntactical stylistic devices, you may proceed, in the summarizing form, to cases of their convergence, paying attention to each SD contributing to the general effect and of course specifying those which bear the main responsibility for the creation of additional information and the intensification of the basic one:

1. In Paris there must have been a lot of women not unlike Mrs. Jesmond, beautiful women, clever women, cultured women, exquisite, long-necked, sweet smelling, downy rats. (P.)

2. The stables - I believe they have been replaced by television studios - were on West Sixty-sixth street. Holly selected for me an old sway-back black-and-white mare: "Don't worry, she's safer than a cradle." Which, in my case, was a necessary guarantee, for ten-cent pony rides at childhood carnivals were the limit of my equestrian experience. (T.C.)

3. However, there was no time to think more about the matter, for the fiddles and harp began in real earnest. Away went Mr. Pickwick — hands across, down the middle to the very end of the room, and halfway up the chimney, back again to the door - poussette everywhere - loud stamp on the ground - ready for the next couple - off again - all the figure over once more - another stamp to beat out the time - next couple, and the next, and the next again - never was such going! (D.)

4. Think of the connotations of "murder", that awful word: the lossof emotional control, the hate, the spite, the selfishness, the broken glass, the blood, the cry in the throat, the trembling blindness that results in theirrevocable act, the helpless blow. Murder is the most limited of gestures.(J.H.)

5. There is an immensity of promenading on crutches and off, with sticks and without; and a great deal of conversation, and liveliness and pleasantry. (D.)

6. We sat down at the table. The jaws got to work around the table. (R.W.)

7. Babbitt stopped smoking at least once a month. He did everything in fact except stop smoking. (S.L.)

8. I'm interested in any number of things, enthusiastic about nothing. Everything is significant and nothing is finally important. (Jn.B.)

9. Lord Tompson owns 148 newspapers in England and Canada. He is the most influential Fleet-Street personality. His fortune amounts to 300 mln. He explains his new newspaper purchases so: "I buy newspapers to make money. I make money to buy more newspapers. I buy more newspapers to make more money, etc., etc. without end." (M.St.)

10. He illustrated these melodramatic morsels by handing the tankard to himself with great humility, receiving it haughtily, drinking from it thirstily, and smacking his lips fiercely. (D.)

11. The cigarette tastes rough, a noseful of straw. He puts it out. Never again. (U.)

12. The certain mercenary young person felt that she must not sell her sense of what was right and what was wrong, and what was true and what was false, and what was just and what was unjust, for any price that could be paid to her by any one alive. (J.F.)

13. A girl on a hilltop, credulous, plastic, young: drinking the air she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy of expectant youth. (S.L.)

14 I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted and appointed him. In my will. (D.)

15. This is what the telegram said: Has Cyril called yet? On no account introduce him into theatrical circles. Vitally important. Letter follows. (P.G.W.)

16. In November a cold unseen stranger whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony touching one here and one there with icy fingers. Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. (O'N.)

17. He came to us, you see, about three months ago. A skilled and experienced waiter. Has given complete satisfaction. He has been in England about five years. (Ch.)

18. If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life, talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by an accident. Our words - our lives - our pains - nothing! The taking of our lives -lives of a good shoe-maker and a poor fish-peddler - all! That last mo'ment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph! (H.R.)

19. The main thought uppermost in Fife's mind was that everything in the war was so organized, and handled with such matter-of-fact dispatch. Like a business. Like a regular business. And yet at the bottom of it was blood: blood, mutilation, death. It seemed weird, wacky to Fife. (J.)

20. Constance had said: "If ever I'm a widow, I won't wear them, positively," in the tone of youth; and Mrs. Baines had replied: "I hope you won't, my dear." That was over twenty years ago, but Constance perfectly remembered. And now, she was a widow! How strange and how impressive was life! And she had kept her word; not without hesitations; for though times were changed, Bursley was still Bursley; but she had kept it. (A.B.)

 21. The reasons why John Harmon should not come to life: Because he has passively allowed these dear old faithful friends to pass into possession of the property. Because he sees them happy with it. Because they have virtually adopted Bella, and will provide for her. Because there is affection enough in her heart to develop into something enduringly good, under favourable conditions. Because her faults have been intensified by her place in my father's will and she is already growing better. Because her marriage with John Harmon, after what I have heard from her own lips, would be a shocking mockery. Because if John Harmon comes to life and does not marry her, the property falls into the very hands that hold it now. (D.)

22. In Arthur Calgary's fatigued brain the word seemed to dance on the wall. Money! Money! Money! Like a motif in an opera, he thought. Mrs. Argyle's money! Money put into trust! Money put into an annuity! Residual estate left to her husband! Money got from the bank! Money in the bureau drawer! Hester rushing out to her car with no money in her purse... Money found on Jacko, money that he swore his mother had given him. (Ch.)

23. Mr. Pickwick related, how he had first met Jingle; how he had eloped with Miss Wardle; how he had cheerfully resigned the fady for pecuniary considerations; how he had entrapped him into a lady's boarding school; and how he, Mr. Pickwick, now felt it his duty to expose his assumption for his present name and rank. (D.)

24. "And with a footman up behind, with a bar across, to keep his legs from being poled! And with a coachman up in front sinking down into a seat big enough for three of him, all covered with upholstery in green and white! And with two bay horses tossing their heads and stepping higher than they trot long-ways! And with you and me leaning back inside, as grand as ninepence!" (D.)

25. I looked at him. I know I smiled. His face looked as though it were plunging into water. I couldn't touch him. I wanted so to touch him I smiled again and my hands got wet on the telephone and then for the moment I couldn't see him at all and I shook my head and my face was wet and I said, "I'm glad. I'm glad. Don't you worry. I'm glad." (J.B.)