The right (wrong, etc) + Noun

STRUCTURAL PATTERNS

NOTES

1. Curzon St. is a famous street in Mayfair West London, once a street of fashionable houses where rich or aristocratic people formerly lived. Today some of the old houses remain, many of them turned into hotels or boarding-houses. Others have been removed to make way for blocks of modern office buildings.

2.... the cheaper kinds of goats were left about with elaborate carelessness...

... said Miss Mebbin, with her disagreeably pleasant laugh.

In the combinations elaborate carelessness and disagreeably pleasant individual components clash, as they are contradictory in meaning. This stylistic device is called oxymoron. Oxymoron mostly appears in the patterns: adjective + noun and adverb + adjective.

3.... while no trace of the rifle's deadly work could be found on the tiger.

The combination the rifle's deadly work means here the shot itself or the result of the shot. Such an indirect or round-about way of referring to an object or a phenomenon instead of a plainer form of expression is called periphrasis. Periphrasis can be understood only in its context. Metaphors are often used in periphrasis.

Here are some other examples of periphrasis:

Mrs. Thayer... herded Miss Hannah back into her stall (Lardner) = she put the record back in its place.

... the happiest portion of human.life (Dickens) - childhood.

... the embodiment of respectability and the sense of property (Galsworthy) - Soames Forsyte.

1. Gerund as Attribute (Noun + Prep + Gerund)

The prospect of earning the thousand rupees aroused the sporting and commercial instinct of the villagers.

Certain abstract nouns are commonly used with attributes expressed by the gerund. In most cases the gerund is preceded by the preposition of. The attribute acquires appositive meaning, i. e. it serves to explain the meaning of the head-noun. Among the nouns thus used are (dis)advantage, art, experience, fear, feeling, habit, idea, impression, intention, manner, means, method, prospect, risk and some others.

I had the advantage of looking younger than I was.	У меня было то преимущество, что я выглядела моложе своих лет.
After a while I began to have a feeling of being watched.	Через некоторое время у меня появилось ощущение, что за мной следят.
I had no hope of snatching even a short rest.	У меня не было надежды выкроить время даже для короткого отдыха.

Evidently the wrong animal had been hit.

Such adjectives and adjective pronouns as right (тот, который нужен, правильный), wrong (не тот), very, only, main, chief, principal, central, left, right, same, following, present, former (первый) and latter (последний) give a unique meaning to the noun they precede; therefore the definite article is used.

It seems to be the right method of solving the problem.

Кажется, это правильный метод решения проблемы.

Note: An only child is to be regarded as a set phrase meaning единственный ребенок у родителей: She is as spoiled as if she were an only child. But: Robin was the only child in the bus.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-27