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Assignments for Self-Control. 1. What syntactical stylistic devices dealing with arrangement of sentence members do you remember?
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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 its
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 arrange-
ment 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 prom-inent place here belongs to ellipsis, ordeliberate 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 com-pleted 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-suf-ficient. 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.
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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 оf the break is the desire to cut short the information with which the sentence began. In suchcases there аrе 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.
С.:Damn the sun.
H.: Is it night already then?
С.: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.)
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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 nice 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.)
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