Analysis of syntactical stylistic devices based on the arrangement of sentence members

Epiphora is the repetition at the end of a phrase.  
I am exactly the man to be placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the rest of mankind, in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in such a case as that. 
          Repetition can also be arranged in the form of a frame: the initial parts of syntactical units are repeated at the end of it. Such compositional units are called framing. Framing makes the whole utterance more compact and more complete.

Anadiplosis/ Reduplication: the last word or phrase of one part of the utterance is repeated at the beginning of the next part. 
This compositional pattern is also called chain-repetition: 
          A smile would come into Mr.Pickwick’s face: the smile extended into a laugh: the laugh into a roar, and the roar became general.  
Any repetition causes some modification of meaning which needs analysis. The functions of the repetition are the following: 
          1) to intensify the utterance.  
          Those evening bells! Those evening bells! 
Meditation, sadness, reminiscence and other psychological and emotional states of mind are suggested by the repetition of the phrase with the intensifier ‘those’. 
          2) Repetition may also stress monotony of action, suggest fatigue, despair, hopelessness or doom: 
          What has my life been? Fag and grind, fag and grind. Turn the wheel, turn the wheel.

Pleonasm/Tautology is the use of more words in a sentence than are necessary to express the meaning: 
          1. It was a clear starry sky, and not a cloud was to be seen. 
          2. He was the only survivor; no one else was saved.

Enumeration is a stylistic device by which separate things, objects, phenomena, actions or properties are named one by one so that they produce a chain. The links of the chain are forced to display some semantic homogeneity.  
          The grouping of sometimes absolutely heterogeous notions meets the peculiar purport of the writer. Enumeration is frequently used to depict scenery through a tourist’s eyes as it gives one an insight into the mind of the observer.

Suspense consists in arranging the matter of communication in such a way that the less important parts are amassed at the beginning, the main idea being withheld till the end of the sentence. Thus the reader’s attention is held and his interest kept up, as he is in the state of uncertainty and expectation. Suspense sometimes goes together with Climax.

Climax/Gradation is the arrangement of sentences which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance or emotional tension in the utterance. The gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways: logical, emotional and quantitative. Emotional climax is mainly found in sentences.  
          It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city. 
Quantitative climax is an evident increase in the volume of the concepts: 
          They looked at hundreds of houses, they climbed thousands of stairs, they inspected innumerable kitchens.  
          The function of this stylistic device is to show the relative importance of the things as seen by the author.

Bathosor anticlimax is a sudden drop from elevated to the commonplace that produces a comic or ridiculous effect. 
                   Antithesis is a stylistic opposition, setting thing one against the other. In order to characterize a thing or phenomenon from a specific point of view, it may be necessary to find points of sharp contrast. 
                   Antithesis has the basic function of rhyme-forming because of the parallel arrangement on which it is founded. 
                     

Asyndeton is a deliberate omission of connectives between parts of sentences where they are generally expected to be according to the norms of the language 
          Soams turned away; he had an utter disinclination to talk.

Polysyndeton is the stylistic device of connecting sentences or phrases or words by using connectives before each component. 
The repetition of conjunctions and other means of connection makes an utterance more rhythmical, so one of the functions of polysyndeton is rhythmical. 
Unlike enumeration, which combines elements of thought into one whole, polysyndeton shows things isolated. 
          And, polysyndeton. has also the function of expressing sequence.

The Gap-Sentence Link (GSL) is a peculiar type of connection of sentences in which the connection is not immediately seen and it requires an effort to grasp the interrelation between the parts of the utterance. 
The Gap-Sentence Link is generally indicated by and or but. The functions of GSL are the following:  
      1) it signals the introduction of inner represented speech; 
      2) it indicates a subjective evaluation of the facts; 
      3) it displays an unexpected coupling of ideas. 
          The Gap-Sentence Link aims at stirring up in the reader’s mind the suppositions, associations and conditions under which the sentence can exist.

Ellipsis refers to any omitted part of speech that is understood, i.e. the omission is intentional. In writing and printing this intentional omission is indicated by the row of three dots (…) or asterisks (***). 
          Ellipsis always imitates the common features of colloquial language. This punctuation mark is called a suspension point or dot-dot-dot.

Good intentions but-; You just come home or I’ll…

Litotes is a peculiar use of negative construction: the negation plus noun or adjective establish a positive feature in a person or thing. It is a deliberate understatement used to produce a stylistic effect. Litotesis not a pure negation, but a negation that includes affirmation.  
Such negative constructions have a stronger effect on the reader than affirmative ones. 
          She was not without taste. 
The constructions with two negations: not unlike, not unpromising, not displeased make positive phrases. 

1.2 Arrangement of Sentence Members.

Stylistic study of the syntax begins with the study of the length and the structure of a sentence. It appears, the length of any language unit is a very important factor in information exchange, for the human brain can receive and transmit information only if the latter is punctuated by pauses.

Theoretically speaking a sentence can be of any length, as there are no linguistic limitations for its growth, so even monstrous constructions of several hundred words each, technically should be viewed as sentences.

Indeed, psychologically, no reader is prepared to perceive as a syntactical whole those sentences in which the punctuation mark of a full stop comes after the 124th word (Joyce Carol Oates. Expensive People), or 128th word (E. Hemingway. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber),or 256th word (T. Pynchon. The Crying of Lot 49), or 631 st word (N. Mailer. Why Are We in Vietnam ?),or even after 45 whole pages of the text (J. Joyce. Ulysses).

Unable to specify the upper limit of sentence length we definitely know its lower mark to be one word. One-word sentences possess a very strong emphatic impact, for their only word obtains both the word-and the sentence-stress. The word constituting a sentence also obtains its own sentence-intonation which, too, helps to foreground the content. Cf.: "They could keep the Minden Street Shop going until they got the notice to quit; which mightn't be for two years. Or they could wait and see what kind of alternative premises were offered. If the site was good. - If. Or. And, quite inevitably, borrowing money." (J.Br.) As you see, even synsemantic conjunctions, receiving the status of sentences are noticeably promoted in their semantic and expressive value.

Abrupt changes from short sentences to long ones and then back again, create a very strong effect of tension and suspense for they serve to arrange a nervous, uneven, ragged rhythm of the utterance.

There is no direct or immediate correlation between the length and the structure of a sentence: short sentences may be structurally complicated, while the long ones, on the contrary, may have only one subject-predicate pair. Cf.: "Through the windows of the drag-store Eighth street looked extremely animated with families trooping toward the center of the town, flags aslant in children's hands, mother and pa in holiday attire and sweating freely, with patriarchal automobiles of neighboring farmers full of starched youngsters and draped with bunting." (J.R.) Almost 50 words of this sentence cluster around one subject-predicate centre "Eighth street looked animated".

At the same time very short sentences may boast of two and more clauses, i.e. may be complex, as we observe in the following cases: "He promised he'd come if the cops leave." (J.B.) "Their father who was the poorest man in town kept turning to the same jokes when he was treated to a beer or two." (A. S.) Still, most often, bigger lengths go together with complex structures.

Not only the clarity and understandability of the sentence but also its expressiveness depend on the position of clauses, constituting it. So, if a sentence opens with the main clause, which is followed by dependent units, such a structure is called loose, is less emphatic and is highly characteristic of informal writing and conversation. Periodic sentences, on the contrary, open with subordinate clauses, absolute and participial constructions, the main clause being withheld until the end. Such structures are known for their emphasis and are used mainly in creative prose. Similar structuring of the beginning of the sentence and its end produces balanced sentences known for stressing the logic and reasoning of the content and thus preferred in publicist writing.

A word leaving the dictionary to become a member of the sentence normally loses its polysemy and actualizes only one of its meanings in the context. The same is true about the syntactical valency: a member of the sentence fulfils one syntactical function. There are cases, though, when syntactical ambivalence is preserved by certain members of a sentence which fact creates semantic ambiguity for it allows at least two different readings of the sentence. In the now famous quotation from N. Chomsky "The shooting of the hunters..." the second part may be regarded both as an attribute ("whose shooting" = who was shooting) and as аи object ("whose shooting" = who was shot). Another sentence, composed by Yu. Apresyan to prove the effectiveness of transformational procedures, shows a much bigger syntactical ambivalence, for practically each of its members can be viewed as playing more than one syntactical role, which brings the total number of possible readings of the sentence to 32 semantic variants. Hereitis: "Приглашение рабочих бригад вызвало осуждение товарища Иванова".

Sometimes syntactical ambivalence, like the play on words on the lexical level, is intentional and is used to achieve a humorous effect. Cf.: "Do you expect me to sleep with you in the room?" (B.Sh.) Depending on the function of "with you" the sentence may be read "to sleep with you! in the room" (and not in the field, or in the garden) or "to sleep with you in the room" (and not alone, or with my mother). The solution lies with the reader and is explicated in oral communication by the corresponding pausation and intonation. To convey them in the written form of speech order of words and punctuation are used.

The possibilities of intonation are much richer than those of punctuation. Indeed, intonation alone may create, add, change, reverse both the logical and the emotional information of an utterance. Punctuation is much poorer and it is used not alone, but emphasizing and substantiating the lexical and syntactical meanings of sentence-components. Points of exclamation and of interrogation, dots, dashes help to specify the meaning of the written sentence which in oral speech would be conveyed by the intonation. It is not only the emphatic types of punctuation listed above that may serve as an additional source of information, but also more conventional commas, semicolons and full stops. E.g.: "What's your name?" "John Lewis." "Mine's Liza. Watkin." (K.K.) The full stop between the name and the surname shows there was a pause between them and the surname came as a response to the reaction (surprise, amusement, roused interest) of John Lewis at such an informal self-introduction.

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 connotation 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 anadiplosis -...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.

 
1.3. Sentence Arrangement 
Sentences may be arranged in four basic ways, each creating a different emphasis.

The loose sentence places the main point at the beginning and then adds the explanatory material. For example, if you wanted to address a current problem in the office - such as workers opening windows when the air conditioning or heat is running - you could start with that main idea and follow with supporting details:

Open office windows can create many problems, including higher heating and cooling costs, distracting street noise or pollution, and some potentially dangerous situations.

The cumulative sentence presents the main idea somewhere in the middle, with explanatory material before and after.

While it may seem a harmless situation, open office windows can create problems, not the least of which is the potential for birds and other animals to enter the building.

The periodic sentence presents supporting details first, saving the main idea for the end.

Considering the potential for increased costs, pollution, noise, and animal invasion, management asks that office windows remain closed.

The balanced sentence is built to emphasize a similarity or contrast between two or more of its parts.

Everyone has agreed that keeping the office windows closed will reduce heating and cooling costs and create a quieter, safer work environment.

 

1.4. Inversion

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 word 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 theme, 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.

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 fulfillment and are thus heavily elasticized 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.

2.2.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."

"He was the man killed that deer." 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.