Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

This petty pace creeps in from day to day

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over.

Compare a mere statement: Scrooge went to bed and thought it over with the above example, in which the repetition emphatically underlines intensity and duration of the process: Scrooge thought laboriously; he was plunged into intensive and continuous thinking

According to Galperin, syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices are not paradigmatic but syntagmatic or structural means. In defining syntactical devices Galperin proceeds from the following thesis: the structural elements have their own independent meaning and this meaning may affect the lexical meaning. In doing so it may impart a special contextual meaning to some of the lexical units.

Let us analyse the following well-known couplet from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day. (W. Shakespeare)

Here, the occurrences of temporal adverb “tomorrow” are tied together with the co-ordinating conjunction “and” to for and Adjunct. As the play draws to its conclusion, the grim inevitability of its denouement is signalled in this sequence of repetition, delivered here with an almost laboured monotony. The inexorability of the passage of time is picked up again at the end of the sequence with the repetition of another r[temporal adverb in the Adjunct
day to day”. Thus grammatical structure works to create temporal “book-ends” around the main Predicator (Creeps in”) and Subject (”this petty pace”) elements.

Imagine the Subject, Predicator and Complement elements of a main clause as the hub around which satellite structures, principally Adjuncts and subordinate clauses, can be placed. In the Shakespeare’s example, Adjuncts are placed on either side of a Subject and Predicator is balanced, we use the term equivalent constituents to explain this stylistic technique. The stylistic effectiveness of this configuration can be tested simply by pulling it apart; the following “unravelled” version has little impact and nor does it seem to make much sense:

As we see from the examples above, on the level of syntax expressiveness is achieved in speci­fic syntactical patterns that are a result either of various transformations or permutations of the neutral unemphatic patterns or their interrelations.

It is known that the sentence, as distinct from units of lower levels, is a sequence of relatively independent lexical and phrasal units (words and w/c)/ what differentiates a sentence from a word (we know that a word, too, may be used as a sentence) is the fact that the sentence structure is changeable; the sentence is not a unit of constant length possessing neither upper nor lower limitations – it can be shortened or extended; it can be complete or incomplete, simple, compound, or complex. Its constituents, length, word order, as well as communicative type (assertion, negation, interrogation, exhortation) are variable.

2. Expressive means and stylis­tic devices on the syntactical level

There are different approaches to the classification of EM and SD in syntax. Some linguists don’t draw a strict borderline between these notions (Arnold, Kukharenko).

The principal notion of stylistic syntax is that of the basic model of the sentence – S – P – O - Adv. It presents a stylistically unmarked structure, as it does not carry any connotative information. It is stylistically neutral. The predominance of S—P—О word-order makes conspicuous any change in the structure of the sentence and inevitably calls forth a mod­ification in the intonation design and on the wake of it – the semantic aspect of the utterance. Various stylis­tic connotations appear thanks to different transformations of the basic model.

In syntax the neutral model of the sentence is the common two-member sentence, containing the subject and predicate and perhaps a few secondary elements as well. The order of words should be normal; the function (the communicative purpose) of the sentence is expected to be consistent with its structure: thus a declarative sentence must express a statement, and not a question or a request. Nothing should be felt to be missing or superfluous. Any kind of deviation from the said requirements is stylistically relevant.

According to Prof. Morokhovsky, the transformations may be first of all intrasentential (relations between elements within one sentence structure). The elements of the basic structure may be: reduced, expanded and permuted, thus acquiring an additional meaning and forming stylistically marked structures.

Under “markedness” A. Morokhovsky means the marked member of the opposition (a reduced, or expanded, or permuted model) which have some additional information that the unmarked member (the basic model of the sentence) has not, but both members of the opposition indicate the same object in the conceptual or objective reality. Stylistically marked elements of every language level stand in the paradigmatic relations to the unmarked elements and constitute the expressive means (EM) of the given language. Prof. Screbnev defines them as paradigmatic syntax.

Thus, expressive means on the syntactical level are those syntactical models, which carry an additional logical or expressive information due to intrasentential transformations of the basic model of the sentence (reduction, expansion, and inversion).

According to the types of transformations of the basic model of the sentence EM in syntax are divided into three groups:

I/ EM based on the reduction of the basic model (ellipsis, apokoinu constructions, aposiopesis, nominative sentences, asyndeton);

2/ EM based on the expansion of the basic model (repetition, enumeration, syntactical tautology, polysyndeton, emphatic constructions, parenthetic sentences);

3/ EM based on violation of the word order (de­tachment, inversion).

However, in the text the stylistic effect in syntax may be created not only due to intrasentential relations, but also due to intersentential relations (relations between several sentences) or due to transposition of the meaning of a sentence or sentence connection in a certain context. These relations are linear or syntagmatic. Prof. Screbnev defines SD based on the syntagmatic relations as syntagmatic syntax.

According to Prof. Morokhovsky, these relations are presented by: 1/ various combinations of models of the sentence in a certain context; 2/ transposition of the meaning of the sentence structure; 3/ transposition of the meaning of syntactic connection. Thanks to these intersentential relations syntactical SD are formed.

Thus syntactical stylistic devices are formed 1/ by means of different intersentential combinations of structures in a certain context, 2/ by means of transposition of the meaning of the utterance in a certain speech or situational context, and 3/ by means of transposition of the meaning of connection means in the utterance.

SD in syntax fall into three groups:

I/ SD based on interconnection of several syntactical constructions in a certain context (parallelism, chiasmus, anaphora, epiphora);

2/ SD based on the transposition of the meaning of the syntactical construction or the model of the sentence (rhetoric questions, negative sentences as statements);

3/ SD based on the transposition of the meaning of the means of connection between the components of the sentences (parcellation, coordination instead of subordination).

In the next part of the lecture we will consider the basic, most common techniques mentioned above and explore the stylistic effect they create.

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