Stylistic Inversion

COMPOSITIONAL PATTERNS OF SYNTACTICAL ARRANGEMENT

Structural syntactical stylistic devices are in special relations with the intonation involved. There is an interdependence between the intonation and syntactical properties of the sentence: the more explicitly the structural syntactical relations are expressed, the weaker will be the intonation-pattern of the utterance (to complete disappearance) and the stronger the intonation, the weaker grow the evident syntactical relations.

'Only after dinner did I make up my mind to go there' and '/ made up my mind to go there only after dinner.' 'It was in Bucharest that the Xth International Congress of Linguists took place' and 'The Xth International Congress of Linguists took place in Bucharest.'

The second sentences can be made emphatic only by intonation; the first sentences are made emphatic by means of the syn­tactical patterns: 'Only after dinner did I...' and 'It was... that...'

When viewing the stylistic functions of different syntactical designs one must take into consideration two aspects:

1. The juxtaposition of different parts of the utterance.

2. The way the parts are connected with each other.

In addition to these two large groups of EMs and SDs two other groups may be distinguished:

3. Those based on the peculiar use of colloquial constructions.

4. Those based on the stylistic use of structural meaning.

Word-order is a crucial syntactical problem in many languages. Stylistic inversion (3) aims at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the sur­face meaning of the utterance. Thereforeore a specific intonation pattern is the inevitable satellite of inversion.

Stylistic inversion in Modern English should not be regarded as a violation of the norms of standard English. It is only the practical realization of what is potential in the language itself.

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..." "Once upon a midnight dreary..."

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

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

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:

"Eagerly I wished the morrow." (Poe)

"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:

"In went Mr. Pickwick." (Dickens) "Down dropped the breeze..." (Coleridge)

These five models comprise the most common and recognized mod­els of inversion.

However, in modern English and American poetry there appears a definite tendency to experiment with the word-order to the extent which may even render the message unintelligi­ble. In this case there may be an almost unlimited number of rearrange­ments of the members of the sentence.

Inversion as a stylistic device is always sense-motivated. There is a tendency to account for inversion in poetry by rhythmical consider­ations. Inverted word-order is one of the forms of emphatic constructions. What is generally called traditional word-order is nothing more than unemphatic construction. Emphatic constructions have been regarded as non-typical structures and are considered as violations of the regular word-order in the sentence. But in practice these structures are as common as the fixed or traditional word-order structures. Therefore inversion must be re­garded as an expressive means of the language having typical structural models.

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