Stylistics of sequences
The subject matter of this branch is the stylistic value of syntagmatic chains (linear combinations). The stylistics of sequences (or syntagmatic stylistics) treats of the functions of co-occurrence of identical, different, or contrastive (opposite) linguistic units. By 'units' are meant discrete constituents at any level. But then, what exactly should be understood by 'co-occurrence'? What is felt as co-occurring, and what cases of cooccurrence produce no particular stylistic effect? The answer depends on what level or plane we are talking about.
Thus, the interaction of utterances (sentences) may be felt over a considerable distance. The novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser begins with the sentence "Dusk — of a summer night." The same sentence recurs at the end of the second volume of the novel: it is the opening statement of the epilogue. An attentive reader will inevitably recall the beginning of the book as soon as he comes to its conclusion.
In opposition to recurring utterances, phonetic units (sounds and sound combinations) are felt as co-occurring only within more or less short sequences: alliteration (see below) is noticeable in words adjacent or close to one another; rhyme is perceived if acoustically similar elements are separated by a few lines of verse, no more: if the distance is too great, our memory does not retain the impression of the first element, and the effect of phonetic similarity does not occur. It must not be lost sight of that the average reader (listener) pays much more attention to the sense of speech acts than their phonetic aspect.
As in the first part, here, too, the treatment of stylistic problems is arranged according to the structural levels (from the phonemic upwards). Semasiology concludes the discussion.
Chapter I. PHONETICS OF SEQUENCES (SYNTAGMATIC PHONETICS)
This part of stylistics deals with prosody and interaction of speech sounds in sequences.
The term 'prosody', which is often explained as rules of versification, i.e. the basic formal theory of poetry, is understood much more broadly in modern linguistics: the term today denotes general suprasegmental characteristics of speech (tonality, length, force, tempo, and, especially, the alternation of stressed and unstressed elements — rhythm).
The number of prosodic variants (intonational treatment) of any sequence (phrase, sentence, and so on) is theoretically unlimited. The
phonetician naturally confines his task to finding out the most general types of intonation — such as comparing 'statement' — 'question' — 'exclamation'. But the actual prosodic structure of any real utterance has individual features, which are stylistically significant.
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As for interaction of speech sounds, of considerable importance is the recurrence of the same consonant ('alliteration') or the same vowel ('assonance').
Alliteration. This term denotes recurrence of an initial consonant in two or more words which either follow one another, or appear close enough to be noticeable. Alliteration is widely used in English — more often than in other languages (Russian, for one). We can see it in poetry and in prose, very often in titles of books, in slogans, and in set phrases.
Take the well-known book titles: Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (Ch. Dickens), Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austin). Short story titles: The Pimienta Pancakes, The Clarion Call, The Last Leaf, Retrieved Reformation (O. Henry).
Set expressions: last but not least, now or never, bag and baggage, forgive and forget, house and home, good as gold, dead as a doornail, cool as a cucumber, still as a stone.
Alliteration is so favoured in English that sometimes it is used to the detriment of the sense. For the sake of alliteration, the famous Marxist motto Proletarier aller Lander, oereinigt euchl was translated as Workers of the world, unitel Moreover, the demand of the unemployed Work or wagesl is absurd, if one does not know that the alliterating word wages stands here for the dole (charitable gift of money claimable by the unemployed).
Alliteration is an ancient device of English poetry. In the Old English period there were no rhymes as today. See the recurrence of the initial /, b and st in Beowulf:
Fyrst ford 3ewat: flota waes on ydum Bat under Ьеогзе. Beornas 3earwe on stefn sti3on.
The important role of alliteration in English is due (at least partially) to the fact that words in Old English were mostly stressed on the first syllable. Assonance. This term is employed to signify recurrence of stressed vowels. I.V. Arnold mentions а1зо the term 'vocalic alliteration' (although the recurring vowels only seldom occupy the initial position in the word). In her book Stylistics of Modern English1 I.V. Arnold quotes three lines from The Raven by Edgar Allan Рое:
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...Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aiden, I shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore -Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?
Assonance here consists in the recurrence of the diphthong [ei], which makes not only inner rhymes (laden — Aiden — maiden), but also occurs in the non-rhyming words: angels and name.
Paronomasia. 'Paronyms' are words similar (though not identical) in sound, but different in meaning. Co-occurrence of paronyms is called 'paronomasia'. Phonetically, paronomasia produces stylistic effects analogous to those of alliteration and assonance. In addition, phonetic similarity and positional propinquity makes the listener (reader) search for semantic connection of the paronyms. This propensity of language users (both poet and reader) to establish imaginary sense correlations on the grounds of formal affinity is named by some linguists 'paronymic attraction'2. In the above quoted book by Arnold two examples are analysed. The words raven and never in Poe's renowned poem (And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting), and the semantically incompatible words poultry and politics — their combination in Michael Mont's inner monologue (John Galsworthy) shows what he thinks of the situation.
Rhythm and metre. The flow of speech presents an alternation of stressed and unstressed elements (syllables). The pattern of interchange of strong and weak segments is called rhythm.
If there is no regularity, no stable recurrence of stressed and unstressed segments, the text we perceive is an example of prose. If, on the contrary, rises and falls (strengthenings and weakenings) recur periodically at equal intervals, the text is classed as poetry (even if it is poor and primitive).
There can be no other way of distinguishing between prose and poetry from the purely linguistic (formally phonetic) viewpoint, which alone is relevant to linguistics. Any discussions of aesthetic value, frequent use of tropes and figures, or generally 'elevated' vision of the world in poetry may be quite important by themselves, but they pertain to the hypersemantic plane of poetry: they are indispensable for a literary critic, but out of place in the treatment of phonetics of sequences. Besides, the semantic features mentioned are typical not only of vers libre (see below), but also of imaginative prose of high-flown type.
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On the whole, the distinctive feature, the most important quality, of poetry is its regular rhythm — not the recurrence of rhyming words, as is presumed by many: rhymes are typical, but not indispensable (see below).
In a verse line, we observe recurrence of disyllabic or trisyllabic segments having identical prosodic structure. The pattern, the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables, is repeated. The smallest recurrent segment of the line, consisting of one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed ones is called the 'foot'.
Since a foot consists of only two or three syllables, it is clear that there cannot be many possible combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables. In fact, there are only five. A foot of two syllables has either the first or the second syllable stressed; a foot of three syllables has either the first, the second, or the third syllable stressed. Thus we have two disyllabic varieties of feet and three trisyllabic ones — five in all.
The structure of the foot determines the metre, i.e. the type of poetic rhythm of the line. Disyllabic metres are trochee and iambus; trisyllabic are dactyl, amphibrach and anapaest.
Disyllabic metres:
1. Trochee. The foot consists of two syllables; the first is stressed: 'u. Disyllabic words with the first syllable stressed demonstrate the
trochaic metre: duty, evening, honey, pretty (and many others, including the word trochee itself).
2. Iambus. Two syllables. The first is unstressed: u'. Examples of iambic words: mistake, prepare, enjoy, behind, again, etc.
Trisyllabic metres:
3. Dactyl. The stress is upon the first syllable; the subsequent two are unstressed: 'uu. Examples of dactylic words: wonderful, beautiful, certainly, dignity, etc.
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4. Amphibrach. The stress falls on the second (medial) syllable of the foot; the first and the last are unstressed: u'u. Examples: umbrella, returning, continue, pretending, etc.
5. Anapaest. The last (third) syllable is stressed: uu'. Examples: understand, interfere, disagree, etc.
A verse line — say, trochaic or iambic — does not necessarily consist of trochaic or iambic words only. A foot can be made up of more than one word — his life (yi1), take it ('u). Moreover, certain words (or syllables) which are stressed in normal speech, should be considered unstressed, and vice versa. Scanning is often artificial as compared with usual reading. Let us again take a quotation from The Raven, by Edgar Allan Рое:
Presently my soul grew stronger
The normal treatment of the line is:
'uuu"'u Scanning turns the line into a regularly trochaic one:
'u'u'u'u
The reader must have understood that to scan means to emphasize all the syllables that are expected to be stressed according to the metrical pattern of the line.
The metrical characteristics of a verse line depends on the number of feet in it. A line may consist of one, two, three, or more feet, but their number rarely exceeds eight (see I.R. Galperin. Stylistics). There are special terms marking the length of the line. For illustration, we shall take trochaic lines:
monometer (one foot) 'u
dimeter (two feet) ' и' u
trimeter (three) 'u'u'u
tetrameter (four) ' и' и' u' и
pentameter (five)
hexameter (six)
septameter (seven) 'u'u'u'u'u'u'u
octameter(eight) 'u'u'u'u'u'u 'u 'u
The number of feet corresponds to the number of stresses. Hence the line 'u'u' also presents a trochaic trimeter; only it becomes 'trimeter incomplete', or 'trimeter hypometric' (from the Greek hypo- = under). It is solely the metres with the final syllables unstressed that can be hypometric, incomplete. Iambus (u ') and anapaest (uu ') cannot be hypometric: loss of the final (stressed) syllable diminishes the number of feet. Compare:
u'u'u' iambic trimeter
u'u'u iambic dimeter
u u' u u' u u' anapaestic trimeter;
u u'u u'u u
or
u u'u u'u anapaestic dimeter.
In the last two examples, the superfluous unstressed syllables make the lines 'hypermetric' (compare 'hypometric' and 'hypermetric'). Dactylic and amphibrachic lines, like trochaic ones, can be hypometric:
'u u' u u' u и dactylic trimeter complete;
'uu'uu'u
and
'u u' u u' dactylic trimeters hypometric;
u' u u' и u' u amphibrachic trimeter complete;
u' u u' u u' amphibrachic trimeter hypometric.
Examples of metrical patterns: 1. Trochee:
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear? (Shelley)
As can easily be seen, every line presents trochaic tetrameter, hypometric (not only plough, low, but also care, wear (which contain the diphthong [еэ]) are stressed monosyllabic words.
2. Iambus:
There went three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they had sworn a solemn oath:
John Barleycorn should die. (Burns)
Here, the lines are of varying metric length: the first and the third demonstrate iambic tetrameter, the second and the fourth, iambic trimeter.
3. Dactyl:
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care,
Fashion'd so slenderly
Young and so fair. (Hood)
Every line presents dactylic dimeter. The difference between lines 1,3 and lines 2, 4 is that the former are dimeter complete, while the latter are hypometric.
4. Amphibrach:
I sprang to the stirrup and Joris and he, I galloped, Dick galloped, we galloped all three. (Browning) Amphibrachic tetrameter hypometric in both lines.
5. Anapaest:
I am monarch of all I survey
From the central all round to the sea. (Pope) Anapaestic trimeter complete in both lines.
Note. In some English poetry, the metre is irregular, not only the number of feet in a line, but also the quality may vary. This is called free verse:
Arise, arise, arise!
There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread;
Be your wounds like eyes
To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. (Shelley)
The first line manifests iambic trimeter, the second consists of three dactylic feet plus one iambic foot. Each of the two subsequent lines has metric peculiarities of its own. Free verse, I.R. Galperin says, is characterized by: 1) a combination of different metrical feet in the line; 2) absence of equilinearity and 3) stanzas (see below) of varying length.*
Even strictly classical metres admit of certain variations in stress. Certain stresses are neglected in scanning, but distinctly felt in normal reading.
In other cases, on the contrary, the scanning stresses certain syllables which are unstressed in normal reading.
Loss of stress in a disyllabic foot makes it completely unstressed: с и. It is called the 'Pyrrhic foot' (from a proper name). The above-quoted stanza of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Men of England, wherefore plough...) has two Pyrrhic feet in the second and the fourth lines:
For the lords who lay ye low... The rich robes your tyrants wear...
Scanning shows four stresses here:
'u'u'u'
In normal reading there are only three stresses, the first foot consisting of two unstressed syllables:
There are also cases of superfluous stresses: a disyllabic foot consists then of two stressed syllables instead of one stressed and one unstressed (*'). A famous poem by Robert Burns written in iambic tetrameter begins with a line in which the first syllable must be stressed: Who's there for honest poverty...
Scanning: u' и 'и 'и'
Actual reading:"u 'u'uu
A foot consisting of two stressed syllables is called a 'spondee'.
Accented verse. This is a type of verse in which only the number of stresses in a line is taken into account. The number of syllables and the type of the feet is irrelevant. Classical English verse (like classical Russian verse) is 'syllabo-tonic' (i.e. one in which both syllables and stresses, or 'tones' are accounted for). Accented verse is only 'tonic'. Here is an example in which every line has three stresses, and the feet vary from spondee to anapaest and iambus:
Work! Work! Work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work — work — work —
Till the stars shine through the roof! (Hood)
Finally, there are poets who reject both metrical patterns and rhyme. When written or printed, their poems resemble regular verse only because of the shortness of the lines.
Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows — through doors — burst
like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation: Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet — no happiness must he have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field
or gathering his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums — so shrill
you bugles blow. (Whitman)
I.R. Galperin writes: "This type of poetry can hardly be called verse from a purely structural point of view... It has become what is sometimes called poetic prose." (idem)
Rhyme. This is the second feature (after rhythm) distinguishing verse from prose. The term denotes a complete (or almost complete) coincidence of acoustic impressions produced by stressed syllables (often together with surrounding unstressed ones). As a rule, such syllables do not immediately follow each other: they mostly recur at the very end of verse lines.
Types of Rhyme
1. Rhymes in words ending with a stressed syllable (i.e. monosyllabic rhymes) are called male (masculine, or single) rhymes:
dreams — streams
obey — away understand — hand
2. Rhymes in words (or word combinations) with the last syllable unstressed are female (feminine, or doable) rhymes:
duty - beauty berry - merry
Bicket — kick it (Galsworthy)
Note. The terms 'male' and 'female' have nothing in common with grammatical gender or sex in English and Russian. They were coined in French where the ending and the stress in certain adjectives differ in accordance with their gender.
3. Rhymes in which the stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed ones are 'dactylic' rhymes (in English, they are preferably called 'triple', or 'treble' rhymes):
tenderly - slenderly battery — flattery
As a rule, it is single words that make a rhyme: stone — alone — own; grey — pray (simple rhymes). Sometimes, however, a word rhymes with a word-group (compound rhymes). They are either feminine (bucket — pluck it), or triple (dactylic): favourite — savour it.
According to the position of the rhyming lines, adjacent rhymes, crossing rhymes, and ring rhymes are distinguished. In descriptions, rhymes are usually replaced by letters of the Latin alphabet; every new rhyme being symbolized by a new letter: a, b, c, d, etc. Adjacent: a abb; crossing: abab; ring: abba.
5 Скребнев
The learner is expected to acquire some knowledge of certain features of traditional rhyming in the English poetry of past centuries.
One of them is the use of 'eye-rhymes' (or: 'rhymes for the eye'). Properly speaking, they are not rhymes: the endings are pronounced quite differently, but the spelling of the endings is identical or similar.
Thus Byron rhymes the words supply and memory: For us, even banquets fond regret supply In the red cup that crowns our memory.
In the well-known poem My Heart's in the Highlands by Robert Burns we encounter:
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods, Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
The source of this tradition is to be searched for in the remote past when many of the modern homographs were also homophones. Nowadays they are merely accepted as rhymes: no one will mispronounce modern words for rhyme's sake.
It is worth noting, however, that numerous eye-rhymes have no historical grounds. Words that never sounded alike came to be used as eye-rhymes due to analogous force: home — come, Love — rove, now — grow, etc.
One should also take into account the dialect used by the writer (dame — warm, river — never were real rhymes for R. Burns) or the time when the poem was written: for Chaucer, the words topoui — labour, have — grave, work — clerk were perfect rhymes.
As mentioned above, rhymes usually occur in the final words of verse lines. Sometimes, though, the final word rhymes with a word inside the line ('inner', or 'internal' rhyme):
I am the daughter of earth and water... (Shelley) Rhymeless verse is called 'blank verse' ('белый стих' in Russian). It is mostly used by playwrights (see Shakespeare's tragedies); see also The Song of Hiawatha by H.W. Longfellow:
Should you ask me whence these stories, Whence these legends and traditions With the odor of the forest, With the dew and damp of meadows...
The structure of verse. The stanza. Two or more verse lines make a stanza (also called a 'strophe'). If the syllable is the shortest unit of prosody in general (i.e. prosody of both prose and verse), the foot is the smallest unit of metre in versification. The next unit is the line: it shows metrical pattern. Finally, the largest unit in verse is the stanza.
"Stanza is a verse segment composed of a number of lines having a definite measure and rhyming system which is repeated throughout the poem." (I.R. Galperin)
In what follows, a brief enumeration of stanzas typical of English poetry is preferred.
The ballad stanza. This variety is characteristic of folk ballads. The metre is the iambus, but it is not strictly kept to (dactylic and anapestic feet are also met with). The stanza consists of four lines. The first and the third have four feet each (tetrameter), the second and the fourth have three (trimeter). As a rule, only the second and the fourth lines rhyme; the first and the third do not.
Now Robin Hood is to Nottingham gone, With a link a down a day, And there he met a silly old woman Was weeping on the way.
The heroic couplet. One of the oldest forms of English strophics. The epithet 'heroic' implies the fact that this stanza was mostly employed in elevated genres. The word 'couplet' shows that it consists of two lines (cf. the word couple). The rhyming is aa, bb, cc, etc., the metre, iambic pentameter. The first to employ it in England was Geoffrey Chaucer. See the beginning of his Canterbury Tales:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed euery vein in swich licour Of which vertu engendered is the floor...
The Spenserian stanza (introduced by Edmund Spenser in the sixteenth century). Nine lines, eight of them iambic pentameter, the ninth iambic hexameter. The rhyme pattern is: a b a b b с b с с. Whilome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth, Who ne in virtue's ways did take delight; But spent his days in riot most uncouth, And vex'd with mirth the drowsy ear of Night, Ah, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight, Sore given to revel and ungodly glee; Few earthly things found favour in his sight Save concubines and carnal companie, And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree. (Byron)
The ottava rima (from Latin octo, Italian otto, otta 'eight'). A stanza consisting of eight lines, each of them iambic pentameter. The rhyming pattern is very strict: ab ab ab cc. This stanza came to England from Italy in the sixteenth century.
For illustration see stanza VIII of Don Juan by Lord Byron: In Seville was he born, a pleasant city, Famous for oranges and women — he Who has not seen it will be much to pity, So says the proverb — and I quite agree; Of all the Spanish towns is none so pretty Cadiz perhaps — but that you soon may see; — Don Juan's parents lived beside the river, A noble stream, and called the Guadalquivir.
Alexander Pushkin used the ottava rime («октава») in his humorous poem A Cottage in Kolomna:
Четырехстопный ямб мне надоел: Им пишет всякий. Мальчикам в забаву Пора б его оставить. Я хотел Давным-давно приняться за октаву. А в самом деле, я бы совладел С тройным созвучием. Пущусь на славу. Ведь рифмы запросто со мной живут: Две придут сами, третью приведут.
The sonnet (from the Italian sonetto). Properly speaking, it is not a part constituent of a longer poem: the sonnet is a stanza which at the same time is a complete poem in itself.
A sonnet is a verse of fourteen lines (iambic pentameter). The rhyming must be strictly observed. The classical pattern is as follows: two quatrains (i.e. four-line stanzas) with only two rhymes in both: abba abba. The two quatrains are followed by two tercets (i.e. three-line stanzas). The rhymes in the tercets are usually cdc ded. It is preferable to alternate female (a) and male (b) rhymes (alternation of male and female is also typical of the tercets).
But all these requirements and restrictions are hardly ever observed to the letter, especially by the English authors. Thus, the famous Shakespearian sonnets (154 in all) consist of 14 lines each, but the rhyming pattern is not observed; moreover, instead of two quatrains and two tercets, Shakespeare makes his sonnet of three quatrains (each with rhymes of its own) plus one couplet. See his Sonnet 130:
My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfume is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, — yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go, —
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she, belied with false compare.
NOTES
1 Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка. Стилистика декодирования. — Л., 1981. The second part of the title ('Stylistica of Decoding') implies teaching the reader to decode the writers' stylistic intentions.
8 See: Григорьев ВЛ. Поэтика слова. — M., 1979.
3 Galperin I Jt. Stylistics. — M., 1971.
Chapter II. MORPHOLOGY OF SEQUENCES (SYNTAGMATIC MORPHOLOGY)
The stylistic value of types of co-occurring morphemes and morphological meanings has not yet been thoroughly investigated, although the importance of such research would be perfectly clear. The present chapter, therefore, contains only a few remarks showing the general direction of stylistic research.
The tense forms of the verb, for instance, could be studied to find out the way past actions are depicted in various types of narrative. The learner is expected to know from the course of elementary grammar the so-called 'historical present', i.e. the use of present-tense forms to express actions which took place in the past. But grammarians hardly ever mention the fact that the use of the 'historical present' (or 'praesens historicum') is considerably more typical of Russian than of English. In English, however, there are cases of linguistic incompetence of the speaker; present tense forms are used indiscriminately, along with those of the past tense, because the speaker does not feel any difference between the forms he came and he come. On the whole, present tense forms, being temporarily indefinite ("omnitemporal"), may be used instead of the past tense forms, i.e. may express past actions (not to speak of future actions, which are often expressed by present tense forms in any case).
As regards non-verbal (nominal or adjectival) forms, the general requirement of good taste is to abstain from repeating the same morphemes or the same parts of speech (except in cases when it is done on purpose for the sake of emphasis). Generally, it is advisable to avoid any superfluous repetition of forms or meanings. Thus, if an utterance
contains the inflectional genitive ('possessive case') Shakespeare's, the following utterance is to have a varying form of the same (or nearly the same) meaning: of Shakespeare. In a further utterance the same relation may be rendered by an adjectival form Shakespearian, and, finally, the speaker (writer) may have recourse to an attributive noun: Shakespeare plays.1 In this way the so-called 'elegant variation' is achieved.
Varying the morphological means of expressing grammatical notions is based, just as in the sphere of phonetics, upon the general rule: monotonous repetition of morphemes or frequent recurrence of morphological meanings expressed differently, is considered a stylistic fault (provided the repetition is not used on purpose).
Other problems of syntagmatic morphology concern cases when cooccurrence ia not immediately felt by the producer and the recipient. But the general stylistic impression always depends on the morphological structure of the text, regardless of whether the co-occurrence of constituents is obvious and directly felt by language users, or whether this impression is accounted for as a result of special calculation. The prevalence in one text of certain morphological units (say, parts of speech), coupled with a lack of other units is often the result of special comparisons of text types.
Let us take as an example the morphological confrontation of colloquial and bookish texts. It is a well-known fact that in the types mentioned, parts of speech are represented quite differently. According to the data obtained by many researchers, colloquial texts comprise much fewer nouns and adjectives than bookish texts do; at the same time, the colloquial sublanguage is very rich in pronouns, deictic words, and also words with a very broad range of meaning (thing, place, business, affair, fact, etc.).2
In colloquial speech, participial constructions are very rare (the so-called 'Nominative Absolute' is practically never used). At the same time, emphatic particles and interjections are very widely employed in everyday intercourse (just, even, simply; oh, eh, now then, etc.).
NOTES
1 A comparative study of the four varieties was undertaken by Ch.Y. Latypov. See: Латыпов Ч.Ю. Атрибутивные словосочетания с номинативными компонентами в современном английском языке: Лвтореф. дисс... канд. филол. наук. — М., 1968.
2 Кудрявцева Н.П. Широкозначная субстантивная лексика в английской разговорной речи: Автореф. дисс... канд. филол. наук. — Одесса, 1988.
Chapter III. LEXICOLOGY OF SEQUENCES (SYNTAGMATIC LEXICOLOGY)
The subject of lexicology is known to be the vocabulary of language, and separate constituents of the vocabulary — words with their history. But if this is true, then the very problem of 'syntagmata' in lexicology is fallacious, and the term 'syntagmatic lexicology', a typical contradiction
in terms.
On the other hand, since we know that lexicology deals with paradigmatic relations between words (by comparing vocabulary units with one another), there are reasons to include in lexicology the interrelations between words arranged syntagmatically. This seems the more reasonable as the problem 'Word and Context' is admittedly a lexicological one.
For lexicology of sequences the 'word-and-context' problem presents a number of stylistic problems — especially those connected with co-occurrence of words of various stylistic colourings.
Results effected by collisions of stylistically different words in the text are varied and unpredictable. To find some regularity in them, we are bound to analyse every case as an individual linguistic event, taking into account the whole of its cultural and historical background. In the present chapter, however, we shall discuss only the most general observations, perhaps even axiomatic ones.
Demonstrating the laws of interaction of co-occurring lexical units, we must take good care to maintain the purity of our stylistic experiment: the material analysed should be secure from any external influence of the context. Hence we must take an utterance and, repeating it, replace every time only one word in a certain position by some other word. Let us vary the direct object of the sentence We have met this man before.
1. We have met this individual before.
2. We have met this person before.
3. We have met this chap before.
4. We have met this guy before.
It is obvious that the four varieties differ stylistically from one another. The first is so elevated that it is even sarcastic. The second is official-sounding. Both are higher than neutral. The third has a tinge of familiarity about it. The fourth is the lowest of all.
It may be stated that a stylistically coloured word imparts its colouring to the whole of the utterance. The words individual, person, chap, guy surrounded by neutral words (We have met this... before) do not lose any of their stylistic qualities. On the contrary, they dominate their surroundings. Examples 1, 2 are superneutral, 3 and 4, sub-neutral.
Yet it would be wrong to conclude that a specific word imparts its own colouring to the neutral words which precede and follow it. The words we, have, met, this, before are neutral. Their stylistic assimilation by the "strong" word is an illusion: only the utterance as a whole acquires the colouring of this word. The influence of an element upon the general stylistic value of the whole is often called 'stylistic irradiation', by analogy with a physiological phenomenon when pain is felt not only in the affected organ, but elsewhere as well.
It is worth mentioning that the effect of irradiation occurs not only in the sphere of words: we can observe this effect everywhere — a single dialectal feature in pronunciation betrays the speaker, discredits his phonetic system, making it substandard; a single metaphor may colour the whole of a paragraph, making it seem imaginative, and so on.
Thus we have established that a stylistically coloured ('specif ic') word in neutral surroundings is the strong, prevailing element of the utterance, its stylistic dominant.
More complicated are cases when the surroundings comprise another non-neutral word (other non-neutral words). The general rule, then, needs certain restrictions, and might read: a stylistically 'coloured' element dominates over the surroundings, provided they cannot offer another stylistic quality inconsistent with that element. A collision of incompatible elements leads to stylistic conflict. A mixture of styles brings about a humorous effect: co-occurrence of 'heterostylistic' words testifies to the linguistic incompetence of the speaker. Writers imitate the stylistic helplessness of their characters, especially their imaginary narrators.
O. Henry's famous couple of 'unillegal grafters', Jefferson Peters and Andrew Tucker, nearly always use a mixture of elevated words with non-literary lexical units or incorrect grammatical forms:
'"Overlooking such a trivial little peccadillo as the habit of manslaughter,' says I, 'what have you accomplished... that you could point to... as an evidence of your qualification for the position?'
"'Why,' says he, in his kind of Southern system of procrastinated accents, 'hain't you heard tell? There ain't any man, black or white... that can tote off a shoat [= carry away, steal a pig] as easy as I can without bein' heard, seen or cotched [= caught]... Some day... I hope to become reckernized [= recognized] as the champion shoat-stealer of the world.'"
Sometimes these two characters in their zeal for bookish expressions, confuse the words they mean with their paronyms, which makes their pretence all the more ridiculous:
"'Jeff,' says Andy after a long time, 'quite unseldom I have seen fit to impugn your molars when you have been chewing the rag with me about your conscientious way of doing business...'" Andy means to say he intended to criticize ('impugn') his friend's morals, but mispronounces the word, saying molars [= back teeth serving to grind, or simply, grinders].
Another character claims he is "stating a hypodermical case", instead of 'a hypothetical case' [hypodermic means 'introducedbeneath the skin']. Of special stylistic significance is the use of foreign words to show incomplete mastery of the language. We need not go far searching for examples: a volume of short stories by О. Henry will provide us with nearly everything we want. In the world-famous story The Last Leaf old Behrman uses German words and pronounces English ones in the German manner: "Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine?..." Macaronic verses are those in which two or more languages intermingle. See, for example, Byron's description of a door in the last canto of Don Juan (canto = 'song', 'chapter'):
It opened with a most infernal creak, Like that of hell. "Lasciate ogni speranza Voi che entrate!" The hinge seemed to speak, Dreadful as Dante's rhima, or this stanza... (The Italian quotation means: "Leave behind every hope you who enter!")
On the previous page one can see a French phrase characterizing scantiness of the hero's attire:
Completely sans culotte and without vest; In short, he hardly could be clothed with less... (The French phrase sans culotte means here, to put it euphemistically, 'without nether garments'.)
In the first canto of the poem we come across a stanza in which a Latin expression is subsequently translated into French, and the reason for using the Latin phrase is explained:
And if in the mean time her husband died,
Never could she survive that common loss;
But just suppose that moment should betide,
I only say suppose it — inter nos.
(This should be entre nous, for Julia thought
in French, but then the rhyme would go for nought.)
(inter nos = entre nous = 'between you and me'.)
Unintentional lexical mixtures of all kinds result in stylistic conflicts: violations of rules produce a ludicrous effect.
Also stylistically important is lexical recurrence (reappearance of the same word in the text).
V. V. Vinogradov and I.R. Galperin single out a special variety of lexical recurrence: the so-called 'root repetition', or 'sham tautology'. It consists in using attributes of the same root with their head-words. The latter thus gets its primary sense strengthened. I.R. Galperin's examples are: To live again in the youth of the young; the dodgerest of all the dodges; a brutish brute.
Similar examples are met with in set phrases, such as to out-Herod Herod (to surpass in cruelty the biblical king who on hearing the prophecy of Jesus Christ's prospective birth, ordered that all newborn babes be killed).
A variety of root repetition is the recurrence of the same noun in different case forms, or, as regards English (with practically no case forms in nouns), in varying case-like syntactic positions: They always disliked their neighbour, their neighbour's noisy company, the very sight of their neighbour, in fact. The phenomenon is known in stylistics as 'polyptoton'. The term, as the phenomenon itself, is better known in stylistic descriptions of inflectional languages.
Lexical repetition, i.e. recurrence of a word for the sake of emphasis, can be treated (as has already been done) in the chapter on paradigmatic syntax: as a redundancy of syntactical elements (mostly of homogeneous parts of the sentence). On the other hand, repetition of a word is cooccurrence of identical lexical units. Our classification theory might be firmer and more precise if we said that paradigmatic syntax includes only a purely syntactical redundancy of elements: for instance, several predicates (instead of one), several attributes (instead of one), and so forth.
Thus the sentence A tall, snub-nosed, fair-haired woman stood at the gate would be an example of redundance of syntactical elements and should, therefore, be treated in paradigmatic syntax, whereas instances like He thought and thought and thought it over and over and over, though they also comprise several syntactically homogeneous elements, should be treated in the present chapter, as demonstrating lexical repetition (i.e. reappearance of the same lexical unit).
Repetition as an expressive device, as a means of emphasis, should be differentiated from cases of chance recurrence of the same word in unprepared, confused, or stuttering colloquial speech: "I — / — / never — never met her there."
Lexical repetition as a means of emphasis must be further distinguished from reappearance of a word at some distance which, however, is
short enough for this recurrence to be noticeable. Its purpose is not to emphasize the idea, but merely to remind one of its importance to the
discourse.
It is common knowledge that the insistent use of the same word throughout a text, if it is not done on purpose, betrays the stylistic inadequacy of the writer (speaker), who cannot replace it by a synonym (see further chapter on syntagmatic semasiology) or change the construction
altogether.
There are practically no rules to diagnose whether the recurrence of a word is a stylistic fault or an intentional stylistic device. Our judgement can be facilitated if we have sufficient data concerning the personality of the writer: he who generally writes good English can hardly be suspected of stylistic defects when he uses the same word several times in a paragraph. On the whole, unconscious defects and deliberate effects are closely interwoven in stylistic matters.
Chapter IV. SYNTAX OF SEQUENCES (SYNTAGMATIC SYNTAX)
The distinctive features of syntagmatic syntax, the traits differentiating it from paradigmatic syntax, are obvious. Paradigmatic syntax deals with the structure of the sentence, the number and position of its constituents, compared with other choices. Syntagmatic syntax deals mainly with a chain of sentences, the sequence of sentences constituting a text. Here we search for stylistic functions in the sequence of sentence forms. Sentences in sequence often show no regular alternation of form. We say that such syntax is stylistically neutral. Often, however, certain regular alternations or reiterations are conspicuous and stylistically relevant.
For example, regular alternation of interrogative and declarative sentences characterizes the text as a dialogue (if questions and answers belong to different speakers) or as an inner monologue (if there is one speaker).
Regular interchange or repetition may not only concern communicative types of sentences, but their syntactic structure as well. Adjacent sentences are often identical or analogous by their syntactical (or morpho-syntactical) structures. Assimilation or even identity of two or more neighbouring sentences (or verse lines) is called 'parallelism' ('parallel constructions'). As a matter of fact, parallelism is a variety of repetition, but not a repetition of lexically identical sentences, only a repetition of syntactical constructions: John kept silent; Mary was thinking. The reader will be convinced that the two sentences are syntactically identical —
subject and predicate consisting of two words. It should be stressed that lexically they are different.
Still, much more often it happens that parallel sentences contain the same lexical elements. See, for instance:
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods... (Burns)
See also:
The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing... (Wordsworth)
Parallelism contributes to rhythmic and melodic unification of adjacent sentences. But not only that. As everywhere in language, semantics is the predominant factor. It is only with regard to lexical meanings that the constructive function of parallelism can be defined. It serves either to emphasize the repeated element, or to create a contrast (see the next chapter), or else underlines the semantic connection between sentences.
Purely syntactical repetitions, with which we have classed parallelism, should be distinguished from lexico-syntactical repetitions. In these, the lexical identity of certain parts of neighbouring sentences is not an optional occurrence (as is the case with parallelism), but quite obligatory. Among them we can discern the following lexico-syntactical devices: anaphora, epiphora, symploca, anadiplosis, chiasmus.
Anaphora. This term implies identity of beginnings, of one or several initial elements in adjacent sentences (verse lines, stanzas, paragraphs). This device, often met with, serves the purpose of strengthening the element that recurs:
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer... Farewell to the forests and wild hanging woods! Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods... (Burns) In the second example, the anaphoric "Farewell to the..." is accompanied by complete parallelism of the rest of each line. This, however, is by no means obligatory with anaphora. Compare with an extract from Hard Times by Charles Dickens:
"For the first time in her life, Louisa had come in the first of the dwellings of the Coketown hands; for the first time in her life she was face to face with anything like individuality in connection with them. She knew of their existence by hundreds and thousands. She knew what results in work a given number of them would produce, in a given space of time. She knew them in crowds passing to or from their nests, like ants or beetles. But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling insects, than of these toiling men and women." (Dickens)
Anaphoric recurrence of words or word combinations helps the reader (hearer) to fix the recurring segment in his memory. It also imparts a certain rhythmical regularity to the prosodic system of the text.
Anaphoric function may be fulfilled not only by a word or word-group, but also by whole sentences, paragraphs, or even greater units. Recall what we have discussed above: the very beginning of An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser ("Dusk — of a summer night... — And the tall walls of a commercial heart of...") which coincides with the first lines of the
epilogue.
Hence, the most general definition could read thus: anaphora is identity of the initial parts of two or more autonomous syntactical segments, adjacent or at a distance in the text, yet obviously connected semantically.
Epiphora. This stylistic figure is the opposite of anaphora. It is recurrence of one or several elements concluding two (or more) syntactical units (utterances, verse lines, sentences, paragraphs, chapters). Example:
"Now this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than himself, who had tried life as a cornet of dragoons, and found it a bore; and afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere." (Dickens) Epiphora, to a still greater extent than anaphora, regularizes the rhythm of the text and makes prose resemble poetry (see the above example). In the next illustration, what we observe is three sentences, all having the same beginnings ("If he wishes...") and identical ends ("he reads a book"). In other words, three sentences are connected both anaphorically and epiphorically. A combination of anaphora and epiphora in two or more adjacent utterances (or stanzas, paragraphs, etc.) is sometimes termed 'symploca':
"If he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book; if he wishes to dash into the thick of battle, he reads a book; if he wishes to soar into heaven, he reads a book." (Chesterton) Note the nearly complete parallelism of the three sentences.
Framing. This term is used here to denote the recurrence of the initial segment at the very end of a syntactic unit (sentence, paragraph, stanza): "Money is what he's after, money!" (Galore) "Those kids were getting it all right, with busted heads and bleeding faces — those kids were getting it." (Griffith)
"Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder." (Dickens)
Anadiplosis (from the Greek 'doubling'): the final element (or elements) of a sentence (paragraph, stanza) recur at the very beginning of the next sentence (paragraph, stanza, etc.). The concluding part of the proceeding syntactic unit serves the starting point of the next:
"With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy; happy at least in my own way." (Bronte)
Three fishers went sailing out into the West,
Out into the West, as the sun went down. (Kingsley)
But why do I talk of Death -
That phantom of grisly bone?
I hardly fear its terrible shape,
It seems so like my own -
It seems so like my own,
Because of the feasts I keep... (Hood)
The extract below demonstrates several syntactic devices; the eighth and ninth lines demonstrate anadiplosis; besides, we can see there two cases of anaphora, two of epiphora, and three cases of framing:
John Anderson, my jo, John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonnie brow was brent; But now you brow is bled, John, Your locks are like the snow; But blessing on your frosty pow, John Anderson, my jo! John Anderson, my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither; And monie a canty day, John We've had wi 'ane anither; Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo. (Burns)
Note. The words of the Highlands dialect: I) jo = joy; 2) acquent = acquainted; 3) bonnie = beautiful; 4) brent - high, proud; 5) bled = bald; 6) pow = hoar-frost; 7) clamb = climbed; 8) thegither" together; 9) monie = many; 10) canty = gay; 11) wi 'ane anither = with one another; 12) maun = must. The word totter means 'walk with difficulty'.
Chiasmus (from the Greek letter X= Chi) means 'crossing'. The term denotes what is sometimes characterized as 'parallelism reversed': two syntactical constructions (sentences or phrases) are parallel, but their members (words) change places, their syntactical positions. What is the
subject in the first, becomes an object or a predicative in the second; a head-word and its attribute change places and functions likewise.
The segments that change places enter opposite logical relations, which fact produces various stylistic effects (depending on the meanings of words and the forms of chiasmatic members). Examples:
That he sings, and he sings, and for ever sings he -"I love my Love and my Love loves me!" (Coleridge) "The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail..." (Dickens)
"... the public wants a thing, therefore it is supplied with it; or the public is supplied with a thing, therefore it wants it." (Thackeray)
Chiasmus is not infrequently met with in titles of books or articles. Thus Roman Jacobson entitles one of his essays The Poetry of Grammar and the Grammar of Poetry. P. Proudhon, whose book treated "Philosophie de la misere" ("Philosophy of Poverty"), was severely criticized by Karl Marx, who called Proudhon's theory "Misere de la philosophie" ("Poverty of Philosophy").
Certain witticisms (puns) are based upon chiasmus:
Soldiers face powder, girls powder faces.
A handsome man kisses misses, an ugly one misses kisses.
Chapter V. SEMASIOLOGY OF SEQUENCES (SYNTAGMATIC SEMASIOLOGY)
As distinct from syntagmatic semasiology investigating the stylistic value of nomination and renaming, syntagmatic semasiology deals with stylistic functions of relationship of names in texts. It studies types of linear arrangement of meanings, singling out, classifying, and describing what is called here 'figures of co-occurrence', by which term combined, joint appearance of sense units is understood (compare with the term 'figures of replacement' in Paradigmatic Semasiology, Fig. 7).
The interrelation of semantic units is unique in any individual text. Yet stylistics, like any other branch of science, aims at generalizations.
The most general types of semantic relationships can be reduced to three. Meanings can be either identical, ordifferent, or else opposite. Let us have a more detailed interpretation.
1. Identical meanings. Linguistic units co-occurring in the text either have the same meanings, or are used as names of the same object (thing, phenomenon, process, property, etc.).
2. Different meanings. The correlative linguistic units in the text are perceived as denoting different objects (phenomena, processes, properties).
3. Opposite meanings. Two correlative units are semantically polar. The meaning of one of them is incompatible with the meaning of the second: the one excludes the other.
It must be underlined here that the first and the third types do not necessarily imply strictly logical, objective identity or, say, contrast, of co-occurrent meanings. More often than not, both the speaker and the listener, under the influence of circumstances, single out only one relation (identity or contrast) from a whole complex of relations. To put it another way, the correlative (co-occurrent) meanings are subjectively thought of as identical, coincident, or as opposed, contrastive. Similarity is treated as identity; identity is ascribed to not quite identical units. Thus the words child, kid, infant, not being "absolute" synonyms and certainly different stylistically, could, under some circumstances, be used alternately in the same text with reference to one and the same object. The identity between the units is relative: much depends on our treatment of the matter, on what' we prefer to underline or to neglect, What we regard as identical must be accepted as such (and usually is) by our interlocutor or reader; whenever the speaker (writer) treats synonyms as different from one another, the listener (reader) is usually cognizant of that (see below).
To illustrate the possibility of contrasting notions which stand in no logical opposition to each other (as do antonyms long — short, young — old, up — down, etc.) we may resort to O. Henry's famous story A Service of Love in which he mentions a master painter, saying: "His fees are high; his lessons are light — his highlights have brought him renown." Clearly the words high and light are not antonyms, yet charging high fees for his lessons is in obvious contrast with a careless, irresponsible, light manner of teaching (the humour of the sentence attains its culmination in the last clause comprising the compound word highlights that means both 'bright spots in a picture' and 'masterpieces'.
As for the second item discussed (difference, inequality of co-occurring meanings), it must be specially underlined that we are dealing here not with any kind of distinction or disparity, but only with cases when carriers of meanings are syntactically and/or semantically correlative. What is meant here is the difference manifest in units with homogeneous functions, e.g. by two or more units characterizing the same referent (object, phenomenon of reality). Thus, in / ask, I beg, I beseech youl the semantic differentiation of the verbs is obviously quantitative (the growing intensity of 'imploring', or, to be more explicit, not the intensity of action or state shows growth, but rather the degree of emotional expression encoded and emotional impression decoded.
To sum up, sometimes two or more units are viewed by both the speaker and the hearer — according to varying aims of communication — as identical, different, or even opposite.
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The three types of semantic interrelations are matched by three groups of figures, which are the subject-matter of syntagmatic semasiology. They are: figures of identity, figures of inequality, and figures of contrast.
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