The possibilities of intonation are much richer than those of punctuation. Indeed, intonation alone may create, add, change, reverse both the logical and the emotional information of an utterance. Punctuation is much poorer and it is used not alone, but emphasizing and substantiating the lexical and syntactical meanings of sentence-components. Points of exclamation and of interrogation, dots, dashes help to specify the meaning of the written sentence which in oral speech would be conveyed by the intonation. It is not only the emphatic types of punctuation listed above that may serve as an additional source of information, but also more conventional commas, semicolons and full stops. E.g.: "What's your name?" "John Lewis." "Mine's Liza. Watkin." (K.K.) The full stop between the name and the surname shows there was a pause between them and the surname came as a response to the reaction (surprise, amusement, roused interest) of John Lewis at such an informal self-introduction.
Exercise I. Comment on the length, the structure, thecommunicative type and punctuation of sentences, indicatingconnotations created by them:
1. The sick child complained that his mother was going to read to him again from the same book: "What did you bring that book I don't like to be read aloud to out of up for?" (E.)
2. Now, although we were little and I certainly couldn't be dreaming of taking Fonny from her or anything like that, and although she didn't really love Fonny, only thought mat she was supposed to because she had spasmed him into this woild, already, Penny's mother didn't like me. (J.B.)
3. The congregation amened him to death; a big sister, in the pulpit, in her long white robe, jumped up and did a little shout; they cried. Help him, Lord Jesus, help him! and the moment he sat down, another sister, her name was Rose and not much later she was going to disappear from the church and have a baby - and I still remember the last time I saw her, when I was about 14 walking the streets in the snow with her face all marked and her hands all swollen and a rag around her head and her stockings falling down singing to herself- stood up and started singing. (J.B.)
4. Than Roy no one could show a more genuine cordiality to a fellow novelist. (S.M.)
5. Such being at bottom the fact, I think it is well to leave it at that. (S M.)
6. Yet at least Mucho, the used car salesman, had believed in the cars. Maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in, Negro, Mexican, cracker, a parade seven days a week, bringing the most Godawful of trade-ins: motorized metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like, out there so naked for anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at, frame cockeyed, rusty underneath, fender repainted in a shade just off enough to depress the value, if not Mucho himself, inside smelling hopelessly of children, supermarket booze, two, sometimes three generations of cigarette smokers, or only of dust - and when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused (when so little he supposed came by that out of fear most of it had to be taken and kept) and what had simply (perhaps tragically) been lost: clipped coupons promising savings of 5 to 10 cents, trading stamps, pink flyers advertizing specials at the market, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads. Yellow Pages torn from the prione book, rags of old underwear or dresses that were already period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman, or car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a grey dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes - it made him sick to look, but he had to look (Th.P.)
7. Soldiers with their cartridges gone wandered aimlessly out of the chapparal, dragging their rifles and plunged into the brush again on the other side of the railroad, black with powder, streaked with sweat, their eyes vacantly on the ground. (J.R.)
8. Strolling up and down the Main Street, talking in little groups on the corners, lounging in and out of strike headquarters were hundreds of big strong-faced miners in their Sunday best. (J.R.)
9. I am, he thought, a part of all that I have touched and that has touched me, which having for me no existence save that I gave to it, became other than itself by being mixed with what I then was, and is now still otherwise, having fused with what I now am, which is itself a cumulation of what I have been becoming. (T.W.)
10. I like people. Not just empty streets and dead buildings. People. People. (P. A.)
11. "You know so much. Where is she?" "Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. I think she's married and quieted down." (T.C.)
12. "Jesus Christ! Look at her face!" Surprise. "Her eyes is closed!" Astonishment. "She likes it!" Amazement.
"Nobody could take my picture doing that!" Moral disgust. "Them goddam white folks!" Fascinated fear. (Wr.)
13. What courage can withstand the ever-enduring and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? (W. I.)
14. "You talk of Christianity when you are in the act of banging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense!" (B.Sh.)
15. What is the good of sitting on the throne when other fellows give all the orders? (B.Sh.)
16. And what are wars but politics
Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody? (R. Fr)
17. Father, was that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless and the dead? Was it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was it you thus baptized unto Death? (D.)
18. "Let us see the state of the case. The question is simple. The question, the usual plain, straight-forward, common-sense question. What can we do for ourself? What can we do for ourself?" (D.)
19. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one... single - more... inch... of... curve-Then his feathers raffled, he stalled and fell. (Rch. B.)
20. "Jake, will you get out!" said Magdalen. (I.M.)
21. A boy and a girt sat on stools drinking pop. An elderly man alone - someone John knew vaguely by sight - the town clerk? - sat behind an empty Coca-Cola bottle. (P. Q.)
22. What your doctor learned: biggest A.M.A. convention ever is full of medical news about remedies and treatments he may (sob!) be using on you. (M.St.)
23. The neon lights in the heart of the city flashed on and off. On and off. On. Off. On. Off. Continuously. (P. A.)
24. Bagdworthy was in seventh heaven. A murder! At Chimneys! Inspector Badgworthy in charge of the case. The police have a clue. Sensational arrest. Promotion and kudos for the afforementioned Inspector. (Ch.)
25. What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief.Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief. Doubt. (S.R.)
1. Comment on the length of the sentence and its stylistic relevance.
2. What do you know about one-word sentences?
3. Is there any correlation between the length and the structure of the sentence?
4. Can syntactical ambivalence be put to stylistic use?
5. What punctuation marks do you know and what is their stylistic potential?
Punctuation also specifies the communicative type of the sentence. So, as you well know, a point of interrogation marks a question and a full stop signals a statement. There are cases though when a statement is crowned with a question mark. Often this punctuation-change is combined with the change of word-order, the latter following the pattern of question. This peculiar interrogative construction which semantically remains a statement is called a rhetorical question. Unlike an ordinary question, the rhetorical question does not demand any information but serves to express the emotions of the speaker and also to call the attention of listeners. Rhetorical questions make an indispensable part of oratoric speech for they very successfully emphasize the orator's ideas. In fact the speaker knows the answer himself and gives it immediately after the question is asked. The interrogative intonation and / or punctuation draw the attention of listeners (readers) to the focus of the utterance. Rhetorical questions are also often asked in "unanswerable" cases, as when in distress or anger we resort to phrases like "What have I done to deserve..." or "What shall I do when...". The artificiality of question-form of such constructions is further stressed by exclamation marks which, alongside points of interrogation, end rhetorical questions.
The effect of the majority of syntactical stylistic devices depends on either the completeness of the structure or on the arrangement of its members. The order in which words (clauses) follow each other is of extreme importance not only for the logical coherence of the sentence but also for its connotational meanings. The following sprawling rambling sentence from E. Waugh's novel Vile Bodies, with clauses heaping one over another, testifies to the carelessness, talkativeness and emotionality of the speaker: "Well, Tony rang up Michael and told him that I'd said that William, thought Michael had written the review because of the reviews I had written of Michael's book last November, though, as a matter of fact, it was Tony himself who wrote it." (E.W.) More examples showing the validity of the syntactical pattern were shown in Exercise I on the previous page.
One of the most prominent places among the SDs dealing with the arrangement of members of the sentence decidedly belongs to repetition. ' We have already seen the repetition of a phoneme (as in alliteration), of a morpheme (as in rhyming, or plain morphemic repetition). As a syntactical SD repetition is recurrence of the same word, word combination, phrase for two and more times. According to the place which the repeated unit occupies in a sentence (utterance), repetition is classified into several types:
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 nonrepeated unit, which, through its novelty, becomes foregrounded. The background-forming function of anaphora is also evident from the kind of words which are repeated anaphorically. Pay attention to their semantics and syntactical function in the sentence when working with Exercise II.
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.
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.
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.
5. chain repetition presents several successive anadiploses -...a, a...b, b...c, c. The effect is that of the smoothly developing logical reasoning.
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).
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.
As you must have seen from the brief description, repetition is a powerful means of emphasis. Besides, repetition adds rhythm and balance to the utterance. The latter function is the major one in parallel constructions which may be viewed as a purely syntactical type of repetition for here we deal with the reiteration of the structure of several successive sentences (clauses), and not of their lexical "flesh". True enough, parallel constructions almost always include some type of lexical repetition too, and such a convergence produces a very strong effect, foregrounding at one go logical, rhythmic, emotive and expressive aspects of the utterance.
Reversed parallelism is called chiasmus. The second part of a chiasmus is, in fact, inversion of the first construction. Thus, if the first sentence (clause) has a direct word order - SPO, the second one will have it inverted - OPS.
Exercise II. From the following examples yon will get a better idea of the functions of various types of repetition, and also of parallelism and chiasmus:
1. I wake up and I'm alone and I walk round Warley and I'm alone; and I talk with people and I'm alone and I look at his face when I'm home and it's dead, (J.Br.)
2. Babbitt was virtuous. He advocated, though he did not practice, the prohibition of alcohol; he praised, - though he did not obey, the laws against motor-speeding. (S.L.)
3. "To think better of it," returned the gallant Blandois, "would be to slight a lady, to slight a lady would be to be deficient in chivalry towards the sex, and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character." (D.)
4. Halfway along the righthand side of the dark brown hall was a dark brown door with a dark brown settie beside it. After I had put my hat, my gloves, my muffler and my coat on the settie we three went through the dark brown door into a darkness without any brown in it. (W.G)
5. I might as well face facts; good-bye "Susan, good-bye a big car, good-bye a: big house, good-bye power, good-bye the silly handsome drearns. (J.Br.)
6. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. (O.W.)
7. I wanted to knock over the table and hit him until my arm had no more strength in it, then give him the boot, give him the boot, give him the boot - I drew a deep breath. (J.Br.)
8. Of her father's being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure. Sure. (D.)
9. Now he understood. He understood many things. One can be a person first. A man first and then a black man or a white man. (P. A.)
10. She stopped, and seemed to catch the distant sound of knocking.
Abandoning the traveller, she hurried towards the parlour; in the passage
she assuredly did hear knocking, angry and impatient knocking, the
knocking of someone who thinks he has knocked too long. (A.B.)
11. Obviously - this is a streptococcal infection. Obviously. (W.D.)
12. And a great desire for peace, peace of no matter what kind, swept through her. (A.B.)
13. When he blinks, a parrot-like look appears, the look of some heavily blinking tropical bird. (A. M.)
14. And everywhere were people. People going into gates and coming out of gates. People staggering and falling. People fighting and cursing. (P. A.)
15. Then there was something between them. There was. There was. (Dr.)
16. He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being that didn't want to kill or be killed. So he ran away from the battle. (St.H.)
17. Failure meant poverty, poverty meant squalor, squalor led, in the final stages, to the smells and stagnation of B. Inn Alley. (D. du M.)
18. "Secret Love", "Autumn Leaves", and something whose title he missed. Supper music. Music to cook by. (U.)
19. Living is the art of loving.
Loving is the art of caring.
Caring is the art of sharing.
Sharing is the art of living. (W.H.D.)
20. I came back, shrinking from my father's money, shrinking from my father's memory: mistrustful of being forced on a mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father's intention in thrusting that marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the dear noble honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life. (D.)
21. If you know anything that is not known to others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at "all, and any reason for keeping it in your own breast, think of me, and conquer that reason and let it be known! (D.)