Compositional patterns of syntactical arrangement

Lecture 14

•S Stylistic inversion

•S Detached constructions.

^ Parallel constructions

Word order is a crucial syntactical problem in many languages. In English it has peculiarities which have been caused by the concrete and specific way the language has developed.. Unlike grammatical inversion stylistic inversion does not change the structural meaning of the sentence, that is, the change in the juxtaposition of the members of the sentence does not indicate structural meaning but has some superstructural function. Stylistic Inversion aims at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the utterance. Therefore a specific intonation pattern is the inevitable satellite of inversion. The following patterns of stylistic inversion are most frequently met in both English prose and English poetry.

1. The object is placed at the beginning of the sentence (see the example above).

2. The attribute is placed after the word it modifies (postposition of the attribute). This model is often used when there is more than one attribute, for example:

"With fingers weary and worn..." (Thomas Hood)

"Once upon a midnight dreary..." (E. A. Рое)

3. a) The predicative is placed before the subject as in

"A good generous prayer it was." (Mark Twain)

or b) the predicative stands before the link verb and both are placed before the subject as in

"Rude am I in my speech..." (Shakespeare)

4. The adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence, as in

"Eagerly I wished the morrow." (Рое)

"My dearest daughter, at your feet I fall." (Dryden)

"A tone of most extraordinary comparison Miss Tox said it in".

(Dickens)

5. Both modifier and predicate stand before the subject, as in

"In went Mr. Pickwick." (Dickens)

"Down dropped the breeze..." (Coleridge)

Sometimes one of the secondary parts of the sentence by some specific consideration of the writer is placed so that it seems formally independent of the word it logically refers to. Such parts of structures are called detached. The structural patterns of detached constructions have not yet been classified, but the most noticeable cases are those in which an attribute or an adverbial modifier is placed not in immediate proximity to its referent, but in some other position. The essential quality of detached construction lies in the fact that the isolated parts represent a kind of independent whole thrust into the sentence or placed in a position which will make the phrase (or word) seem independent. A variant of detached construction is parenthesis.

Parallel construction is a device which may be encountered not so much in the sentence as in the macro-structures dealt with earlier, viz. the syntactical whole and the paragraph. Parallel constructions are often backed up by repetition of words (lexical repetition) and conjunctions and prepositions (polysyndeton). Parallel constructions may be partial or complete. Partial parallel arrangement is the repetition of some parts of successive sentences or clauses. Complete parallel arrangement, also called balance, maintains the principle of identical structures throughout the corresponding sentences. There are two main functions of parallel construction: semantic and structural. Parallel construction is used in different styles of writing with slightly different functions. When used in the matter-of-fact styles it carries, in the main, the idea of semantic equality of the parts, as in scientific prose, where the logical principle of arranging ideas predominates. In the belles-lettres style parallel construction carries an emotive function. That is why it is mainly used as a technical means in building up other stylistic devices, in particular antithesis and climax.

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