Syntactical expressive means and stylistic                  devices: PARTICULAR WAYS OF COMBINING PARTS OF THE UTTERANCE

Essential Terms:

ASYNDETON – a deliberate avoidance of connectives where they are expected to be: The audience rolled about in their chairs; they held their sides, they groaned in an agony of laughter.

POLYSYNDETON is an insistent repetition of a connective between words, phrases or clauses of an utterance:

“They were all three from Milan and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier, and after we were finished with the machines, sometimes we walked back together. (H.)

attachment (the gap-sentence link) is mainly to be found in various representations of the voice of the personage – dialogue, reported speech, entrusted narrative. In the attachment the second part of the utterance is separated from the first one by a full stop though their semantic and grammatical ties remain very strong. The second part appears as an after­thought and is often connected with the beginning of the utterance with the help of a conjunction which brings the latter into the foregrounded opening position: "It wasn't his fault. It was yours. And mine. I now humbly beg you to give me the money with which to buy meals for you to eat. And hereafter do remember it: the next time I shan't beg. I shall simply starve." (S. L.); "Prison is where she belongs. And my husband agrees one thousand per cent." (T. C.)

apokoinu constructions – Here 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: He was the man killed that deer. (R.W.)

ELLIPSIS is absence of one or both principal parts (the subject, the predicate in the sentence). The missing parts are either present in the syntactic environment of the sentence (verbal context), or they are implied by the situation. In any case these parts are easily restored from the context: 

- Where is the man I’m going to speak to?

- Out in the garden.

APOSIOPESIS (BREAK-IN-THE-NARRATIVE)– This term which in Greek means ‘silence’ denotes intentional abstention from continuing the utterance to the end. The speaker (writer) either begins a new utterance or stops altogether: “These people talked to me like this because they don’t know who I am. If only they knew – “ (M. T.)

QUESTION-IN-THE-NARRATIVE (RATIOCINATIVE QUESTION) – a figure in the form of a question which a speaker often asks and often answers himself: “For what is left the poet there?

           For Greeks a blush – for Greece a tear.” (G. B.) 

RHETORICAL QUESTION – a figure of speech based on a statement expressed in an interrogative form, which requires no answer on the part of the reader or speaker: “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?” (Dav.)

REPRESENTED SPEECH is the representation of the actual utterance by a second person, usually by the author, as if it had been spoken, whereas it had not been spoken, but is only represented in the author’s words:

1. “Could he bring a reference from where he now was? He could.” (Dr.)

2. “An idea had occurred to Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene’s trustee, the first step would be to go down and see him at Robin Hill. Robin Hill!” (G.)

Represented speech exists in 2 varieties: uttered represented speech (1) and unuttered or inner represented speech (2).

LITOTES (A VARIANT OF PERIPHRASIS)– a figure of speech which consists in the affirmation of the contrary by negation: “The wedding was no distant event.” (Au.)

I. Speak on the following:                                                                                           1.1. Particular ways of combining parts of the utterance (Types of connection):

1) asyndeton;

2) polysyndeton;

3) attachment( the gap-sentence link);

4) apokoinu constructions

1.2. Particular use of colloquial constructions:

   1) ellipsis

   2) aposiopesis (break-in-the-narrative)

   3) question-in-the-narrative

   4) rhetorical question

   5) represented speech

1.3. Stylistic use of the structural meaning:

   1) litotes

II. In your books of either home reading or individual reading find the above mentioned expressive means and stylistic devices and comment upon their structure and stylistic function.

III. Do the following exercises:

Exercise I. 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, the fat gentleman cautious and Mr. Miller timorous.  (D.)

5. She merely looked at him weakly. The wonder of him! The beauty of love! Her desire toward him! (Dr.)

6. 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.)

7. I’m a horse doctor, animal man. Do some farming, too. Near Tulip, Texas. (Т. С.)

8. 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.)

9. 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.)

10. 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.)

11. "People liked to be with her. And-" She paused again, "-and she was crazy about you." (R. W.)

12. What I had seen of Patti didn't really contradict Kitty's view of her: a girl who means well, but. (D. U.)

13. "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.)

14. "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.)

15.  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.)

16. "Well, they'll get a chance now to show-" (hastily):
"I don't mean-But let's forget that." (O'N.)

17. And it was unlikely that anyone would trouble to look there-until-until-well. (Dr.)

18. There was   no breeze came through the door. (H.)

19. I love Nevada. Why, they don't even have mealtimes here. I never met so many people didn't own a watch. (A. M.)

20. Go down to Lord and Taylors or someplace and get yourself something real nice to impress the boy invited you. (J. K.)

21. There was a whisper in my family that it was love drove him out and not love of the wife he married. (J. St.)