SYNTAX & STYLE

Knitting Textual Ornaments

Just Sentences. Great
Sentences!
s y n t a c t ic a l
t h r o u g h t h e
Le t ’s r u n o u r w ri t i n g
s t o m a k e y a u t h o r
E M s & S D B ro o k s , t h e
g . A s P r o f . c e s ” s a y s ,
cap t i v a t i n r e a t S e n t e n
“ B u i l d in g G n c e th e m
the b o o k W e e x p e r i e
s a re a li v e . l d i ng a s
-s e n t e n c e o t h e i r u n fo
w e r e a c t t , t e a s in g
i n ti m e , a n d l l en g i n g u s
n d t u r n , c h a
the y tw i s t a
r i s i n g u s . ..
s, s u r p
 Agenda
• Warm-up: A talk on “The Logic and Emotions of Syntactical Constructions”.
Learning and Writing Challenges.
• Theory: Means of syntactical foregrounding. Main Characteristics of the
Sentence. Syntactical SDs. Sentence Length. One-Word Sentences. Sentence
Structure. Punctuation. Arrangement of Sentence Members. Rhetorical Question.
Types of Repetition. Parallel Constructions. Chiasmus. Inversion. Suspense.
Detachment. Completeness of Sentence Structure. Ellipsis. One-Member
Sentences. Break. Types of Connection. Polysyndeton. Asyndeton. Attachment.
• Group Discussion. Short assignments on identification of syntactical
foregrounding.
• Summary. Systematizing theory.
 Stylistic syntax

Subject Matter
It investigates the stylistic value of syntactic
forms, stylistic functions of syntactic
phenomena, their stylistic classifications as
well as their appurtenance to sub-languages
or styles
• The sentence, as a unit of a certain level, is a sequence of relatively
independent lexical and phrasal units (words or word combinations),
and what differentiates a sentence from a word is the fact that the
sentence structure is changeable; it does have any constant length: it
can be shortened or extended, complete or incomplete, simple,
compound or complex. Besides, its constituents, length, word-order, as
well as communicative type (assertion, negation, interrogation,
exhortation) are variable.

• So, to analyze the sentence stylistically on the syntactic level, we will

admit that most common and currently used are two-member
sentences containing subject and predicate and perhaps, some
secondary elements, having normal word order and the function.
The very forms of sentences and word-combinations may be neutral
(ordinary, normal sentences) or expressive (any perceptible deviation
from the normal and generally accepted structure of the sentence).
The expressive means of syntax may be subdivided into the following
groups:
1. absence of logically indispensable elements
2. the excessive use of speech elements
3. an unusual arrangement of linguistic elements
4. Types of syntactic connection.
5. Reevaluation of syntactic categories
6. Interaction of Syntactical Structures
REDUCTION OF SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Absence of Syntactical Elements

The phenomena to be treated here are syntactically heterogeneous.
Thus, the lack of certain words may be stated in:
• a) elliptical sentences (ellipsis);
• b) unfinished sentences (aposiopesis);
• c) nominative sentences;
• d) constructions in which auxiliary elements are missing
(asyndenton).
ELLIPSIS
• Elliptical are those sentences in which one or both principal parts
(subject and predicate) are felt missing since, theoretically, they could
be restored (in contrast with nominative sentences).
• Elliptical sentences are typical of oral communication, especially of
colloquial speech:
• Got any idea? Doing anything special?
• In real colloquial speech elliptical sentences are not stylistically
significant. However, in other communicative spheres they are used
with certain stylistic aims in view.
• In works of fiction elliptical sentences are used to reproduce the direct
speech of characters. They make it real; underline its informality and
familiarity:
• - Going out?
• - Yes!
• - Pictures?
• - No, church.
• In the author’s narration elliptical sentences create the atmosphere of
emotional tension; they impart brevity and a quick tempo: “He became
one of the prominent men of the house. Spoke clearly, sensibly, and
modestly, and was never too long.” (Collins)
• Ellipsis is also characteristic of such special spheres of written speech as
telegraphic messages and reference books (it is used for the sake of
brevity).
APOSIOPESIS
• Unfinished sentences. Aposiopesis (which means “silence”) denotes
intentional abstention from continuing the utterance to the end. The
speaker either begins a new utterance or stops altogether.
• This device is used with the aim of emphasis:
• Ну знаєте! If only they knew that! Well, I never…; Get out. Or else…;
My God! If the police come – find me there … (Dreiser).
• The author invites the reader to give vent to his own imagination to
finish the plot of the story: Well, may be some day! (Galsworthy)
NOMINATIVE SENTENCES
The communicative function of a nominative sentence is stating the existence of
the thing named:
• “London. Fog everywhere. Implacable November weather.”(Dickens)
• “Nothing – nothing! Just the scent of camphor… The little old house! A
mausoleum.” (Galsworthy)
• Nominative sentences comprise only one principal part expressed by a noun
or a noun equivalent. They arouse in the mind of a hearer (reader) a more
isolated image of the object, leaving in the background its interrelations with
other objects.
• Nominative sentences are especially suitable for preliminary descriptions
introducing the reader to the situation.
ABSENCE OF AUXILIARY ELEMENTS
The term implies auxiliary verbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions.
They are omitted in careless colloquial speech:
• I been waiting here all morning.
• Chair comfortable?
• Great man, Holmes!
• “Where were you born?” – “London”.
These sentences should not be confused with elliptical ones, as they
have both principal parts (though not complete).
ASYNDETON
means ‘absence of conjunctions’. Asyndetic connection between words,
clauses and sentences is based upon the lexical meanings of the parts
connected. Absence of connecting elements imparts dynamic force to
the text:
• You want anything, you pay for it.
• Bicket did not answer – his throat felt dry. (Galsworthy)
• You get older, you want to feel that you accomplished something.
• He said he had seen it before
REDUNDANCY OF SENTENCE
STRUCTURE
Excess of syntactical elements
The general stylistic value of sentences containing an excessive number
of component parts is their emphatic nature. Repetition of a speech
element emphasizes the significance of the element, increases the
emotional force of speech:
a) Repetition;
b) Polysyndeton;
c) Prolepsis, or syntactic tautology;
d) Emphasizing the rheme of the utterance
REPETITION
is an expressive stylistic means widely used in all varieties of emotional
speech – in poetry and rhetoric, in everyday intercourse.
• The simplest variety of repetition is just repeating a word, a group of
words, or a whole sentence:
• “Scroodge went to bed again and thought, and thought, and thought it
over and over and over.”(Dickens)
• The repeated element (or elements) attracts the reader’s attention as
being the most important
 a..., a..., a...
1. anaphora: the beginning of two or more successive
sentences (clauses) is repeated - a..., a..., a... . The main
stylistic function of anaphora is hot so much to
emphasize the repeated unit as to create the background
textile non-repeated unit, which, through its novelty,
becomes foregrounded.
• Anaphora ( a…, a…, a…) –is the use of identical words at the
beginning of two or more contiguous sentences or verse lines.
Sometimes it is combined with parallelism, e.g.:
• Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow!
• Farewell to the straits and green valleys below!
• Farewell to the forests and wild hanging woods!
• Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods! (Burns)
• The expressive purpose of anaphora to imprint the elements,
emphasized by repetition, in the reader’s memory, to impart a peculiar
kind of rhythm to the speech and to increase the sound harmony.
 
 ...a, ...a, ...a.
2. epiphora: the end of successive sentences (clauses) is repeated
-...a, ...a, ...a. The main function of epiphora is to add stress to the final
words of the sentence.
• Epiphora (…a, …a, …a) – is the recurrence of identical elements in the
end of two or more contiguous utterances: “Now, this gentleman had a
younger brother of still better appearance than himself, who had tried life
as a cornet of dragoons, and found it a bore; and had afterwards tried it in
the train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore…” (Dickens)
• Epiphora contributes to rhythmical regularity of speech, making prose
resemble poetry. It may combined with anaphora and parallelism
 a... a.
3. framing: the beginning of the sentence is repeated in the end, thus forming the
"frame" for the non-repeated part of the sentence (utterance) - a... a. The function of
framing is to elucidate the notion mentioned in the beginning of the sentence. Between
two appearances of the repeated unit there comes the developing middle part of the
sentence which explains and clarifies what was introduced in the beginning, so that by
the time it is used for the second time its semantics is concretized and specified.
• Framing (a …a)– is a particular kind of repetition in which the two repeated
elements occupy the two most prominent positions – the initial and the final:
• “Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division,
settle everything somehow, and never wonder” (Dickens)
• The so called appended statement (the repetition of the pronominal subject and of
the auxiliary part of the predicate) are also referred to framing:
• “You’ve made a nice mess, you have…” (Jerome)
 ...a, a....
4. catch repetition (anadiplosis). the end of one clause (sentence) is
repeated in the beginning of the following one -...a, a.... Specification of
the semantics occurs here too, but on a 'more modest level.
• Anadiplosis (…a, a …) – is a kind of repetition in which a word or a
group of words concluding a sentence, a phrase or a verse line recur at
the beginning of the next segment:
• “With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy; happy at least in my
way” (Bronte)
...a, a...b, b...c, c.
5. chain repetition presents several
successive anadiploses -...a, a...b, b...c,
c. The effect is that of the smoothly
developing logical reasoning
 ...a, ...a..., a.. .
6. ordinary repetition has no definite place in the sentence and the
repeated unit occurs in various positions - ...a, ...a..., a.. . Ordinary
repetition emphasizes both the logical and the emotional meanings of
the reiterated word (phrase).
 ...a, a, a...
7. successive repetition is a string of closely following each other
reiterated units - ...a, a, a... This is the most emphatic type of repetition
which signifies the peak of emotions of the speaker.
POLYSYNDETON
the term as opposed to ‘asyndeton’ means excessive use (repetition) of conjunctions –
the conjunction ‘and’ in most cases. Conjunctions may connect separate words, parts of
a sentence (phrases), clauses and so on.
The repetition of conjunction ‘and’ underlines close connection of the successive
elements:
“Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling, and boiling,
And thumping, and plumping, and bumping, and jumping,
And dashing, and flashing, and splashing, and clashing;
And so never ending, and always descending…
And in this way the water comes down at Lodore.” (R. Southey)
PROLEPSIS
or syntactic tautology – is repetition of the noun subject in the form of a
personal pronoun. The stylistic purpose of this device is to emphasize
the subject, to make it more conspicuous:
“Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty days and nights without waking up”
(O’Henry)
Prolepsis is especially typical of uncultivated speech:
“Bolivar, he’s plenty tired and he can’t carry double” (O’Henry)
VIOLATION OF WORD-ORDER
An unusual arrangement of linguistic elements
English, as opposed to Ukrainian (or Latin), is characterized by fixed
order of words. This does not mean that changes of word-order are
impossible in English. This means, however, that every relocation of
sentence parts in English is of greater importance, of a more significant
stylistic value than in Ukrainian.
• Any kind of deviation from the usual order of words in the sentence is
called inversion. Stylistic inversion is placing a part of the sentence
into a position unusual for it for the purpose of emphasis:
• “They slid down” – “Down they slid”
• The displacement of the subject and predicate is called complete
inversion:
• Rude am I in my speech… (W. Shakespeare)
• The displacement of secondary members of the sentence and their
shift into the front, opening position is called partial inversion:
• Awfully jolly letters she wrote! (Christie)
DETACHMENT
• (відокремлення) means that a secondary member
• a) becomes phonetically separated
• b) obtains emphatic stress
• c) sometimes (not necessarily) changes its habitual position.
• This secondary part of the sentence, remaining what it has been (an attribute, an adverbial modifier,
etc.), at the same time assumes the function of an additional predicative; it comes to resemble the
predicate.
• Detachment makes the word prominent. Thus, from the point of view of stylistics, detachment is
nothing but emphasis.
• Theoretically any secondary part of the sentence can be detached:
• “Very small and child-like, he never looked more than fourteen.”
• “Brave boy, he saved my life and shall not regret it” (Twain)
• “How could John, with his heart of gold, leave his family?”
PARENTHESIS
• words, phrases and clauses disconnected grammatically with their syntactical
surroundings, also possess stylistic value. Parenthesis may perform the following
stylistic functions:
• • to reproduce two parallel lines of thought, two different planes of narration (in the
author’s speech): “… he was struck by the thought (what devil’s whisper? – what evil
hint of an evil spirit?) – supposing that he and Roberta – no, say, he and Sondra – (no,
Sondra could swim so well and so could he) – he and Roberta were in a small boat
somewhere…” (Dreiser)
• • to make the sentence or clause more emphatic: “The main entrance (he had never
ventured to look beyond that) was a splendiferous combination of a glass and iron
awning.” (Dreiser)
• • to strengthen the emotional force by making part of the utterance interrogative or
exclamatory: “Here is a long passage – what enormous prospective I make of it! –
leading from Peggoty’s kitchen to the front door.” (Dickens)
• • to avoid monotonous repetition of similar constructions
• • to impart colloquial character to the author’s narration.
SEPARATION
• Splitting of the noun-phrase by the attribute adjunct which is removed
from the word it modifies.
• “There was a world of anticipation in her voice, and of confidence,
too.”
 Reevaluation of syntactic
categories
Reevaluation of syntactic categories means the use
of certain syntactical categories or forms of their
expression with their meanings transferred. In various
circumstances, affirmative, negative, interrogative and
imperative sentences may replace one another, fulfilling
the same (or nearly the same) communicative intention.
THE RHETORICAL QUESTION
• is a special syntactical stylistic device the essence of which consists in reshaping the
grammatical meaning of the interrogative sentence. In other words, the question is no
longer a question but a statement expressed in the form of an interrogative sentence.
• Thus there is interplay of two structural meanings: 1) that of the question and
• 2) that of the statement (either affirmative or negative). Both are materialized
simultaneously. For example:
• What does it matter? = It doesn’t matter.
• What’s the use? = It’s no use.
• Isn’t it true? = It’s true.
• Didn’t I tell you? = I told you.
• "Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace?" "Is there not blood
enough
• upon your penal code, that more must be poured forth to ascend to Heaven and testify
against you?" (Byron)
• Quasi-affirmative sentences – denote a certain variety of the rhetorical question with a
negative predicate. The implication of such a negative question is an affirmative statement:
• Isn’t that too bad? = That’s too bad.
• “Don’t I remember! = I do remember!
• The interrogative form makes the affirmative statement much stronger.
• Quasi-negative sentences – most of them are rhetorical questions with affirmative predicates:
• “Did I say a word about the money?” (Shaw) = I didn’t say.
• • The use of ‘as if, as though’
• As if I ever stopped thinking about you.
• • Ironical repetition of the interlocutor’s utterance (or of its part):
• “Shall you be back to dinner, sir?” – “Dinner!” muttered Soames and was gone.” (Galsworthy)
• Quasi-imperative sentences do not contain the imperative form of the verb but express order
or request:
• “Tea. For two. Out here.” (Shaw ) “Here! Quick!”
• Quasi-interrogative sentences are either imperative or declarative. Instead of asking
• How old are you? Where were you born? - Write down your age and birthplace.
 FORMAL AND SEMANTIC INTERACTION OF
SYNTACTICAL CONSTRUCTIONS

Interaction of Syntactical Structures

• Words, phrases and sentences are logically connected in speech.
This circumstance brings about certain structural connection,
structural influence of one sentence upon the neighbouring one.
• Changes in the type of connection between sentences are stylistically
relevant.
PARALLELISM
means a more or less complete identity of syntactical structures of two or
more contiguous sentences or verse lines:
• “The cock is crowing,
• The stream is flowing,
• The small birds twitter,
• The lake doth glitter” (Wordsworth)
Parallelism is often accompanied by the lexical identity of one or several
members of each sentence. In this case parallelism serves as a syntactical
means of making the recurring parts prominent, more conspicuous than their
surroundings.
CHIASMUS
• is a special variety of parallelism. It is a
reproduction in the given sentence of the
general syntactical structure as well as
of the lexical elements of the preceding
sentence, the syntactical positions of the
lexical elements undergoing inversion:
• “The jail might have been the infirmary,
the infirmary might have been the
jail…” (Dickens)
 TRANSFORMATION OF TYPES AND MEANS OF
SYNTACTIC CONNECTION
• Parcellation – a deliberate break of the sentence structure into isolated
parts, separated by a pause or a period.
“It angered him finally. With a curious sort of anger”.
• Usage of co-ordination instead of subordination and
subordination instead of co-ordination
“the day was clear ad we decided to climb the mountain”
Correct mistakes in classification of
syntactical EMs & SDs
1. EM based on the reduction: 1. SD based on the peculiar formal and
ellipsis, chiasmus aposiopesis, semantic interaction of syntactical
constructions:
nominative sentences.
parallelism, anaphora, epiphora.
2. EM based on the redundancy:
2. SD based on the transposition of the
Asyndeton, repetition, syntactical meaning in context: emphatic
enumeration, syntactic tautology, constructions
polysyndeton, parenthetical
clauses or sentences. rhetorical 3. SD based on the transformation of the
types and means of connection within or
questions
between sentences: parcellation,
3. EM based on the violation. subordination instead of coordination,
Tautology, stylistic inversion, and coordination instead of subordination.
syntactical split, and detachment
 Check: EMs:
type of transformation of the neutral syntactical pattern, - 3 groups:
1. EM based on the reduction:
ellipsis, aposiopesis, nominative sentences, and asyndeton.
2. EM based on the redundancy:
repetition, enumeration, syntactic tautology, polysyndeton, emphatic
constructions, parenthetical clauses or sentences.
3. EM based on the violation.
stylistic inversion, syntactical split, and detachment
 Check SDs:
the character of the relations between syntactical structures, possible
transpositions of meanings in a context, and the means and types of
connection within a sentence, we distinguish the following groups of
syntactical SD:
1. SD based on the peculiar formal and semantic interaction of
syntactical constructions within a sentential or suprasentential context:
parallelism, chiasmus, anaphora, epiphora.
2. SD based on the transposition of the syntactical meaning in context:
rhetorical questions.
3. SD based on the transformation of the types and means of connection
within or between sentences: parcellation, subordination instead of
coordination, and coordination instead of subordination.
 The stylistic
effect in syntax
TEXTS & Texture may be created
not only due to
the intrasentential
relations (those
between the
elements of a
sentence), but
also due to the
intersentential
(i.e. the relations
between several
sentences)
relations within
Further guidelines:
• http://elearning.kubg.edu.ua/mod/lesson/edit.php?id=47450&mode=full
• PSS: (Paul Simpson. Stylistics. A resource book for students. Routledge. London and
New York. – 262 p.) Section A. Unit 3 p.9, Unit 2 p. 6.; Section B. Unit 3 p. 59; Section
C. Unit 3 p. 108;
• Katie Wales. A Dictionary of Stylistics. Second Edition. Longman. Pearson Education. –
429 p.;
• Kukharenko V. F. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. – Vinnytsia: Nova Knyha, 2000. – 160
c. (Chapter 3. Syntactical Level. Morphemic Repetition. Extension of Morphemic
Valency – P.47-59)
• Syntactical Level
http://elearning.kubg.edu.ua/course/view.php?id=6946&notifyeditingon=1
• P. 202-231, 234-252. Стилистика английского языка/ А.Н.Мороховский,
О.П.Воробьева, Н.И.Лихошерсг, З.В.Тимошенко. - К.: Вища школа, 1991.
• https://studfiles.net/preview/5512086/page:12/
 Thanks!
Have a nice piece of knitted fabric!
A piece of coherent and cohesive text!