Interaction of different types of lexical meaning

Rhythm

Rhyme

Alliteration

Alliteration is a phonetic stylistic device which aims at imparting a melodic effect to the utterance. The essence of this device lies in the repetition of similar sounds, in particular consonant sounds, in close succession, particularly at the beginning of successive words:

"The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence and feud, frost and fires it follows the laws of progression". (J.Galsworthy)

Alliteration is generally regarded as a musical accompaniment of the author's idea, supporting it with some vague emotional atmosphere which each reader interprets for himself.

Rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combinations of words.

Rhyming words are generally placed at a regular distance from each other. In verse they are usually placed at the end of the corresponding lines.

Identity and particularly similarity of sound combinations may be relative. For instance, we distinguish between full rhymes and incomplete rhymes. The full rhyme presupposes identity of the vowel sound and the following consonant sounds in a stressed syllable, as in might, right; needless, heedless.

Incomplete rhymes present a greater variety. They can be divided into two main groups: vowel rhymes and consonant rhymes. In vowel-rhymes the vowels of the syllables in corresponding words are identical, but the consonants may be different as in flesh-fresh-press. Consonant rhymes, on the contrary, show concordance in consonants and disparity in vowels, as in worth-forth; tale-tool- Treble-trouble; flung-long.

Compound rhyme may be set against what is called eye-rhyme, where the letters and not the sounds are identical, as in love - prove, flood - brood, have -grave.

Rhythm exists in all spheres of human activity and assumes multifarious forms. Rhythm in language necessarily demands oppositions that alternate: long, short; stressed, unstressed; high, low and other contrasting segments of speech.

Words in a context may acquire additional lexical meanings not fixed in dictionaries, what we have called contextual meanings. The latter may sometimes deviate from the dictionary meaning to such a degree that the new meaning even becomes the opposite of the primary meaning.

What is known in linguistics as transferred meaning is practically the interrelation between two types of lexical meaning: dictionary and contextual. The contextual meaning will always depend on the dictionary (logical) meaning to a greater or lesser extent. When the deviation from the acknowledged meaning is carried to a degree that it causes an unexpected turn in the recognized logical meanings, we register a stylistic device.

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