Climax (Gradation)

Suspense

Enumeration

Enumeration is a stylistic device by means of which homogeneous parts of an utterance are made heterogeneous from the semantic point of view. For example:

"Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and his sole mourner. " (Dickens)

The enumeration here is heterogeneous; the legal terms placed in a string with such words as 'friend' and 'mourner' result in a kind of clash, a thing typical of any stylistic device. Here there is a clash between terminological vocabulary and common neutral words. In addition there is a clash of concepts: 'friend' and 'mourner' by force of enumeration are equal in significance to the business office of 'executor', 'administrator', etc. and also to that of 'legatee'.

Suspense is a compositional device which consists in arranging the matter of a communication in such a way that the less important, descriptive, subordinate parts are amassed at the beginning, the main idea being withheld till the end of the sentence. Thus the reader's attention is held and his interest kept up, for example:

"Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw. " (Charles Lamb)

Sentences of this type are called periodic sentences, or periods. Their function is to create suspense, to keep the reader in a state of uncertainty and expectation.

Suspense and climax sometimes go together. In this case all the information contained in the series of statement-clauses preceding the solution-statement are arranged in the order of gradation.

The device of suspense is especially favoured by orators. This is apparently due to the strong influence of intonation which helps to create the desired atmosphere of expectation and emotional tension which goes with it.

Suspense always requires long stretches of speech or writing.

Climax is an arrangement of sentences (or of the homogeneous parts of one sentence) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance as in:

"It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city. "

A gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways: logical, emotional and quantitative.

Logical climax is based on the relative importance of the component parts looked at from the point of view of the concepts embodied in them. This relative importance may be evaluated both objectively and subjectively.

Emotional climax is based on the relative emotional tension produced by words with emotive meaning, as in the first example, with the words 'lovely', 'beautiful', 'fair'.

Emotional climax is mainly found in sentences, more rarely in longer syntactical units. This is natural. Emotional charge cannot hold long.

Quantitative climax is an evident increase in the volume of the corresponding concepts.

The indispensable constituents of climax are:

a) the distributional constituent: close proximity of the component parts arranged in increasing order of importance or significance;

b) the syntactical pattern: structure of each of the clauses or sentences with possible lexical repetition;

c) the connotative constituent: the explanatory context which helps the reader to grasp the gradation, as no... ever once in all his life, nobody ever, nobody and others.

Climax, like many other stylistic devices, is a means by which the author discloses his world outlook, his evaluation of objective facts and phenomena. The concrete stylistic function of this device is to show the relative importance of things as seen by the author, or to impress upon the reader the significance of the things described by suggested comparison, or to depict phenomena dynamically. Antithesis

In order to characterize a thing or phenomenon from a specific point of view, it may be necessary not to find points of resemblance or association between it and some other thing or phenomenon, but to find points of sharp contrast, that is, to set one against the other, for example:

"A saint abroad, and a devil at home. " (Bunyan) "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. " (Milton) Stylistic opposition, which is given a special name, the term antithesis, is of a different linguistic nature: it is based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pairs, as in: Youth is lovely, age is lonely, Youth is fiery, age is frosty; (Longfellow)

Antithesis has the following basic functions: rhythm-forming; copulative; dissevering in their own peculiar manner.

ПИТАННЯ, ЩО ВИНОСЯТЬСЯ НА ІСПИТ

1. Etymological survey of the English word-stock: definition of native terms, borrowing, translation loan, semantic loan. Words of native origin and their characteristics.

2. Foreign elements in Modern English. Scandinavian borrowings, classical elements - Latin and Greek, French borrowings, Ukrainian-English lexical correlations; assimilation of borrowings. Types and degrees of assimilation. International words.

3. Word-formation in Modern English: the morphological structure of a word. The morpheme. The principles of morphemic analysis. Types of morphemes. Structural types of words: simple, derived, compound words.

4. Productivity. Productive and non-productive ways of word-formation. Affixation. General characteristics of suffixes and prefixes. Classification of prefixes. Classification of suffixes. Productive and non-productive affixes, dead and living affixes.

5. Word-composition. Classification of compound words. Coordinative and subordinative compound words and their types. Conversion, its definition. Shortening. Lexical abbreviations. Acronyms. Clipping.

6. Non-productive means of word formation. Blending. Back-formation. Onomatopoeia. Sentence-condensation. Sound and stress interchange.

7. English vocabulary as a system. Definition of the term "synonym". A synonymic group and its dominant member. Problem of classification of synonyms. Different principles of classification: according to difference in denotational component of meaning or in connotational component (ideographic or stylistic synonyms); according to the criterion of interchangeability in linguistic contaxt (relative, total and contextual synonyms). Characteristic pattern of English synonyms. The sources of synonymy.

8. Homonyms. Classification. Origin of homonyms. The English vocabulary as an adaptive system. Neologisms.

9. Traditional lexicological grouping. Lexicogrammatical groups. Word-families.

10. The concept of polarity of meaning. Antonyms. Morphological classification of antonyms: absolute or root antonyms and derivational antonyms. Semantic classification of antonyms: antonyms proper, complementaries, conversives.

11. The theory of the semantic field. Common semantic denominator. Thematic or ideographic groups. Common contextual associations.

12. Hyponymy, paradigmatic relation of inclusion. Hyponyms, hyperonyms, equonyms.

13. Phraseology: Free word combination and phraseological word combination. The problem of definition of phraseological word combination. The essential features of phraseological units: lack of semantic motivation (idiomaticity) and lexical and grammatical stability. The concept of reproducibility.

14. Different approaches to the classification of phraseological units: semantic, functional (according to their grammatical structure), contextual.

15. Academician V.V.Vinogradov's classification of phraseological units. The degree of idiomaticity as an essential requirement for the classification:

a) phraseological combinations;

b) phraseological unities;

c) phraseological fusions.

16. Stylistic aspect of phraseology. Polysemy and Synonymy of Phraseological Units.

17. N.N.Amosova's concept of contextual analysis. Definition of fixed context. Two types of units of fixed context: a) phrasemes, b) idioms. Two types of idioms. S.V.Koonin's concept of phraseological units. Functional and semantic classification of phraseological units. Formal and functional classification.

18. Phraseological stability. Proverbs, saying, familiar quotations and cliches.

19. Grammar in the system of language. Morphology. Parts of speech. Language and Speech.
Linguistic levels. Practical and theoretical grammar. The main features of an analytical
language. Morphology and Syntax. Word. Morpheme.

20. Different approaches to the classification of words. Scerba's classification of words.
Notional and functional parts of speech.

21. Noun.

22. Article.

23. Verb.

24. Syntax. Types of sentences in English. Sentence: General. Actual division of the sentence. Communicative types of sentences.

25. Simple sentence: constituent structure. Simple sentence: paradigmatic structure.

26. Composite sentence as a polypredicative construction. Complex sentence. Compound sentence.

27. Semi-complex and semi-compound sentences. Sentence in the text.

28. General notes on style and stylistics. Expressive means and stylistic devices.

29. Stylistic classification of the English vocabulary.

30. Phonetic expressive means and stylistic devices.

31. Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices.

32. Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices.

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