III. Other Syntactical SDs

Syntactical stylistic devices add logical, emotive, expressive information to the utterance regardless of lexical meanings of sentence components. There are certain structures though, whose emphasis depends not only on the arrangement of sentence members but also on their components.

a) A n t i t h e s i s is a good example of them: syntactically antithesis is just another case of parallel constructions. But unlike parallelism, which is indifferent to the semantics of its components, the two parts of an antithesis must be semantically opposite to each other, as in the sad maxim of O. Wilde: “Some people have much to live on, and little to live for,” where “much” and “little” present a pair of antonyms, supported by the contextual opposition of postpositions “on” and “for.” Another example:

“If we don’t know who gains by his death we do know who loses by it”

Here, too, we have the leading antonymous pair “gain - lose” and the supporting one, made stronger by the emphatic form of the affirmative construction “don’t know / do know”

That’s why we may define antithesis as an opposition or contrast of ideas expressed by parallelism of strongly contrasted words placed at the beginning and at the end of a single sentence or clause.

Antithesis is often based on the use of antonyms and is aimed at emphasizing contrasting features.

e.g. He ordered a bottle of the worst possible port wine, at the highest possible price (Dickens)

Antithesis as a semantic opposition emphasized by its realization in similar structures, is often observed on lower levels of language hierarchy, especially on the morphemic level where two antonymous affixed create a powerful effect of contrast: “Their pre – money wives did not go together with their post – money daughters.” (E. Hemingwing)

The main function of antithesis is to stress the heterogeneity of the described phenomenon, to show that the latter is a dialectical unity of two (or more) opposing features.

b) Another type of semantically complicated parallelism is presented by climax, in which each next word – combination (clause, sentence) is Logically more important or emotionally stronger and more explicit: “Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!” (Dickens)

“I am firm, thou art obstinate, he is pig - headed” (B. Chsrlestone)

if to create antithesis we use antonyms (or their contextual equivalents) in climax we deal with strings of synonyms or at least semantically related words belonging to the same thematic group.

The negative form of the structures participating in the formation of climax reverses the order in which climax – components are used, as in the following examples: “No tree, no shrub, no blade of grass that was not owned” (J. Calsworhty).

It is the absence of substance or quality that is being emphasized by the negative form of the climax, this is why relative synonyms are arranged not in the ascending but in the descending order as to the expressed quality or quantity.

Cf.: “Be careful,” said Mr. Jingle.

“Not look.” “Not a wink,” said Mr. Tupman. “Not a syllable. Not a whisper.” (Dickens)

proceeding from the nature of the emphasized phenomenon it is possible to speak of logical, emotive or quantitative types of climax. The most widely spread model of climax is a three-step construction, in which intensification of logical importance, of emotive or quantity is gradually rising from step to step.

e.g. “Say yes. If you don’t, I’ll break into tears. I’ll sob, I’ll moan. I’ll growl.” (Th. S.)

In emotive climax we rather often meet a two-step structure, in which the second part repeats the first one and is further strengthened by an intensifier, as in the following instances:

“He was so helpless, so very helpless” (W. Deeping)

“She felt better, immensely better” (W. Deeping)

“I have been so unhappy here, so very, very unhappy.” (Dickens)

Finally, we come to quantitative climax. This is an evident in the volume of the corresponding concepts as in:

“They looked at hundreds of houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspected innumerable kitchens” (Maugham)

Here the climax is achieved by simple numerical increase. In the following example climax is naturalized by setting side by side concepts of measure and time:

“Little by little, bit by bit, and day by day, and year by year the baron got the worst of some disputed questions” (Dickens)

Climax, like many other stylistic devices, is a means by which the author discloses his world outlook, his evolution of objective facts and phenomena. The stylistic function of this device is to show the relative importance of things as seen by the author (especially in emotional climax), or to impress upon the realer the significance of the things described by suggested comparison, or to depict phenomena dynamically

c) Climax suddenly interrupted by an unexpected turn of the thought which defeats expectations of the reader (listener) and ends in complete semantic reversal of the emphasized idea, is called anticlimax

e.g.

“In moments of the utter crises my nerves act in the most extraordinary way. When utter disaster seems imminent my whole being is simultaneously braced to avoid it. I size up the situation in a flash, set my teeth, contract my muscles, take a firm grip of myself, and without a tremor always do the wrong thing” (B. Shaw)

To stress the abruptness of the change emphatic punctuation (dash, most often) is used.

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