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Assignments for Self-Control. 1. Comment on the length of the sentence and its stylistic relevance.
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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 a rhetorical q uestion. Unlike an ordinary question the rhetorical question doesnot 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. Theorder, 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, talka-tiveness 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 p. 69.
One of the most prominent places among the SDs dealing with 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:
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1. anaphora: the beginning of some successive sentences
(clauses) is repeated- a..., a..., a.... The main stylistic
function of anaphora is not so much to emphasize the
repeated unit as to create the background for the nonre-
peated 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 on pp. 73-74.
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 -...а, 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, repe-tition 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 pro-duces 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 you 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
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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 dreams. (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. Г 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. On 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.)
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