IV. Explain the homonyms which form the basis for the following jokes. Classify their types.

1. An observing man claims to have discovered the colour of the wind. He says he went out and found it blew.

2. Child: Mummy, what makes the Tower of Pisa lean?

Fat mother:! have no idea, dear, or I'd take some myself.

B. Advertisement: "Lion tamer wants tamer lion."

C. Father: Didn't I tell you not to pick any flowers without leave? Child: Yes, daddy, but all these roses had leaves.

D. Diner: Waiter, the soup is spoiled. Waiter: Who told you that?

D i n e r: A little swallow.

6. The difference between a cat and a comma is that a cat has its claws at the end of its paws, and a comma has its pause at the end of a clause.

7. A canner exceedingly canny

One morning remarked to his grannie: "A canner can't can anything that he can, But a canner can't can a can, can'e?"

V. Provide homonyms for the italicized words in the following jokes and extracts and classify them according to Professor A. I. Smirnitsky's classification system.

1.Teacher: Here is a map. Who can show us America? Nick goes to the map and finds America on it. Teacher: Now, tell me, boys, who found America? Boys: Nick.

2.Father: I promised to buy you a car if you passed your examination, and you have failed. What were you doing last term? S o n: I was learning to drive a car.

3."What time do you get up in summer?"

"As soon as the first ray of the sun comes into my window." "Isn't that rather early?" "No, my room faces west."

4."Here, waiter, it seems to me that this fish is not so fresh as the fish you served last Sunday."

"Pardon, sir, it is the very same fish."

5.Old Gentleman: Is it a board school you go to, my dear? Child: No, sir. I believe it be a brick one!

6. Stanton:! think telling the truth is about as healthy as skidding round a corner at sixty.

Freda: And life's got a lot of dangerous corners - hasn't it, Charles?

S t a n t o n: It can have - if you don't choose your route well. To lie or not to lie - what do you think, Olwen?

(From Dangerous Corner by J. B. Priestley)

VI. Do the following italicized words represent homonyms or polysemantic words? Explain reasons for your answers.

1. 26 letters of ABC; to receive letters regularly. 2.no mean scholar; to mean something. 3. to propose a toast; an undone toast. 4. a hand of the clock; to hold a pen in one's hand. 5. to be six foot long; at the foot of the mountain. 6. the capital of a country; to have a big capital (money). 7. to date back to year 1870; to have a date with somebody. 8. to be engaged to Mr. N; to be engaged in conversation. 9. to make afire; to sit at the//re(place). 10. to peel the bark off the branch; to bark loudly at the stranger. 11. A waiter is a person who, instead of waiting on you at once, makes you wait for him, so that you become a waiter too.

Conclusion

 

For the conclusion I'd like to say the book of Lewis Carroll is a universal book, and it can be used not only as the source of texts for reading at the lessons of English language but it generously provides philologists with the examples of many language phenomenons, such as polysemy, homonymy, Carroll used a lot of stylistic devices in his book, for example pun, personification. Carroll lavishly used resources of his native language in his books about Alice's adventures. This book is full of original language discoveries, the author of "Alice in Wonderland" experiments with the language, plays with it. We admire his bright imagination of Professor Dodgson, and try to guess, why a raven is like a writing desk....

I hope that my work would be useful for my colleagues in the process of teaching English and, perhaps, it would inspire other final-year students to work on Lewis Carroll's books in other new directions, though, in my opinion, the process of investigating this book is interminable.

Some of them make the speech of the characters vivid, interesting, humorous, ironical, emotional, understandable; they reflect their thoughts and feelings.

He novels take place in undescribable and unnamed places, but it all begins with a simple rabbit hole. After that Alice's adventures take her to places unknown.

Obviously Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass is chalked full of symbolism and imagery, but most people who read the book don't see the logic behind it. The greatest literary device that Carroll used was logic itself. As a supreme logician the world which he created was a perfect place...a place of truth, honesty, and order. This concept is hard to grasp but it is most certainly true(Spacks).

Symbolism was laced throughout the books. On every page there was something that represented something else. At the beginning the transferring of her size from small to large and so forth represented the process of maturation. Another example is the caucus-race representing the electoral process.

I caught an allusion within the book, or at least i thought it was one. I believe that all the knights and kings of different colors represent King Arthur and his knights. In King Arthur his knights battle knights of all different colors, red, green, yellow, etc., and in Thought the Looking-Glass there are different colored knights and kings who fight.

The personification in the two books is incredible and unbelievable at some points. It stretches from pigs to cats that can vanish and talk to chess pieces with imagination to playing cards that are alive. Don't forget all the animals at the beginning of Alice in Wonderland that join her when she falls down the rabbit hole.

Imagery is everywhere in this book. Carroll did a great job of desrcibing the out-of-this-world places that Alice travelled to as well as the strange creatures that she met. The elaborate pictures don't hurt either.

Finally, we come to language. The language in this book is in a category of its own. Carroll writes for children but has the ability to use language and imagination that would make an adult interested as well. Also, just about all of the songs and poems throught the books are spin-offs on famous songs or poems.

However you view Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, there can be no debate about the amount of literary devices used and the genious of Lewis Carroll.

he survey of different-functional styles will not be complete without at least a cursary look into what constitutes the very notion of text as-a production of man's creative activity in the realm of language. The word 'text', which has imperceptibly crept into common use has never been linguistically ascertained. It is so broad in its application that it can refer to a span of utterance consisting of two lines, on the one hand, and to a whole novel, on the other. Therefore the word needs specification in order to make clear what particular kind of language product has the right to be termed text. When analysing the linguistic nature of a text it is first of all necessary to keep in mind the concept of permanence as set against ephemerality. Text, being the result of language activity, enjoys permanence inasmuch as it belongs to the written variety of language. Text can be what it claims to be only if it possesses the quality of integrity, i.e. wholeness characterized by its gestalt. In other words, text must enjoy a kind of independent existence; it must be an entity in itself. The integrity of the text presupposes the subordination of certain parts to one particular part which reveals the main idea and the purport of the writer. It has already been stated that a text consists of units which we called supra-phrasal. These units are not equal in their significance: some of them bear reference to. the main idea, others only back up the purport of the author. It follows then that supra-phrasal units can be classified as predicative and relative. The interrelation between these will show what kind of importance the author attaches to one or other part of the utterance. The theory of communication has brought about new concepts regarding the information imparted by different texts. It will be of use to distinguish between the following terms: meaning, signification and content. The term 'content' should be reserved for the information imparted by the whole of the text. It follows then that the information contained in a text is its content. However, the content is not a mechanical summing up of the significations of the sentences and the supra-phrasal units. The integrating power of the text greatly influences the signification of the sentences, depriving them of the independence they would enjoy in isolation. The same can be observed in the sentence, where the words to a greater or lesser degree lose their independence and are subjected to sometimes almost imperceptible semantic modifications. To phrase the issue differently, the content of a text modifies the significations of the sentences and the meanings of the words and phrases. The integrating power of the text is considerable and requires careful observation. The information conveyed by a text may be of different kinds; in particular, two kinds of information might be singled out, viz. content-conceptual and content-factual. Content-conceptual information is that which reveals the formation of notions, ideas or concepts. This kind of information is not confined to merely imparting intelligence, facts (real or imaginary), descriptions, events, proceedings, etc. It is much more complicated. It follows then that content-conceptual information is mainly found in the belles-lettres language style. Here it reigns supreme although it may also be encountered in some other functional styles and particularly in diplomatic texts. Content-factual information is that contained in what we have already named matter-of-fact styles, i.e. in newspaper style, in the texts of official documents and in some others. The aim of our work is to analyse the story «Alice/s Adventures in wonderland» by Lewis Caroll. Our problems are: - to find different stylistic Devices in the text; - to analyse them.

Final remarks This brief outline of the most characteristic features of the five language styles and their variants will show that out of the number of features which are easily discernible in each of the styles, some should be considered primary and others secondary; some obligatory, others optional; some constant, others transitory. The necessary data can be obtained by means of an objective statistical count based on a large number of texts, but this task cannot be satisfactorily completed without the-use of computers. Another problem facing the stylicist is whether or not there are separate styles within the spoken variety of the language, and the analysis of these styles if it can be proved that there are any. So far we are of the opinion that styles of language can only be singled out in the written variety. This can be explained by the fact that any style is the result of a deliberate, careful selection of language means which in their correlation constitute this style. This can scarcely be attained in the oral variety of language which by its very nature will not lend itself to careful selection. However, there is folklore, which originated as an oral form of communication; and which may perhaps be classed as a style of language with its own' structural and semantic laws. There many different Stylistic Devices in «Alice’s Adventures in wonderland» by Lewis Carroll. They help to produce strong effect to readers. It helps to depict more clear picture of the story.

 

Bibliography

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2. Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.

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11. Definitions and examples are taken from: Longman Language Activator. – 1997

12. Стилистика

13. Словарь

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