XI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2019

 It is known that a lot of writers use sometimes successfully emotional syntactical structures which are typical of the spoken variety of language in order to depict the emotional state of mind of the characters. These emotional constructions can be used both in the dialogue of different novels or stories and narrative of the author. In spite of the fact that such constructions are deprived of the intonation, they become stylistically marked assuming a greater significance. In that case the emotional structures are thrown into prominence due to the syntactical pattern. There are some the most typical structures of these kinds.

To begin with, one of the most standard patterns provides a simple statement followed by the pronoun “that + noun (pronoun) + verb (in the appropriate form)”: “June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little embodiment of will she was” (The Forsyte Saga by J. Galsworthy).

Speaking about another pattern, it is a–question form with an exclamatory meaning expressing amazement, excitement, enjoyment, indignation, etc., for example:

“He said in an awestruck voice: ‘Boy, is that a piece of boat!’” (The SPECTRE Trilogy by I. Fleming);

“‘A witch she is. I know her back in the old country. Sure, and didn't she come over on the same boat as myself?” (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith).

It should be noted that an exclamatory word, or an interjection, or the conjunction in the same function generally precedes this pattern.

The third one is a morphological pattern (generally use of continuous forms). It is closely connected with syntactical structures, repetitions, inversions, and others:

“‘You are not being silly, are you?’” (L. Ford);

“‘Now we're not going to have any more of that, Mrs. Euston.’”(O'Hara).

Being very typical in colloquial English the fourth pattern represents a construction where a noun or pronoun subject followed by the verbs “to have” (noun + object) or “to be” (noun + predicative) ends with the two components in inverted order, for example:

“She had a high colour, had Sally.” (Roper's Row by W. Deeping);

“He has a rather curious smile, has my friend.”(Diary of Pilgrimage by K. Jerome Jerome).

However, the noun or pronoun subject is sometimes predicated by notional verbs. In this case “to do” is used for this trailing emphatic phrase, as in: “‘He fair beats me, does James Brodie’” (Hatter's Castle by A. J. Cronin).

Negative forms are frequently used with the aim of revealing an emotional splash of the speaker, for instance: “‘you don't say! I do say. I tell you I'm a student of this.’” (Travels with Charley: In Search of America by J. Steinbeck).

Being used in the author's speech theaforementioned patterns of emotional colloquial constructions are combined with a help of a particularly strong stylistic effect. The well–known dichotomy of the oral and the written variety of language is a perfect solution to explain this.

On the one hand, one of the distinctive features of the oral variety is an emotional character revealed mostly in the use of special emotive words, intensifiers and other factors caused by intonation. On the other hand, the written variety isdistinguished by its intellectuality. As a rule, it is reasoned and, ideally, is non-emotional.

Under these circumstances, it gets clear that having travelled from their homeland —dialogue— into the author's domain — monologue— such constructions assume the quality of stylistic devices and some of the examples given above illustrate this with sufficient clarity.

Ellipsis is one of the cases relating to the particular use of colloquial constructions. There are two main meanings of this term.

The first one is that ellipsis is considered to be a written symbol that appears as a sequence of dots (…) indicating that parts of a word or sentence have been omitted. These dots are called ellipsis points.

However, the use of ellipsis can also be more stylistic. Therefore its second meaning provides the omission of a word or a phrase from a sentence. These words omitted may be necessary to make a sentence syntactically correct but they are not necessary for a reader to fully understand the meaning of the sentence.

Being a typical feature of the spoken language ellipsis assumes a new quality when we use it in the written language. Thus, this term becomes a stylistic device supplying suprasegmental information. The following example can give a good explanation to it: “So, Justice Oberwaltzer — solemnly and didactically from his high seat to the jury.” (An American Tragedy by T. Dreiser). As we can see, the predicate is omitted in this sentence. In this case the purpose of the author is focused on expressing his indignation at the shameless speech of the Justice. As a rule, any excited state of mind will manifest itself in some kind of violation of the recognized literary sentence structure.

As a stylistic device, ellipsis imitates the general characteristics of colloquial language, where not the omission of certain members of the sentence but their absence is predetermined by the situation. Probably, it can be appropriate to call the sentences lacking certain members “incomplete–sentences”, leaving the term “ellipsis” to specify structures where we recognize a digression from the traditional literary sentence structure.

Nevertheless such sentences as “See you tomorrow”, “Had a good time?”, “Won't do”, “You say that?” are typical of the colloquial language. These phrases have nothing omitted in them because they are normal syntactical structures in the spoken language. If we call them elliptical, it will mean to judge every sentence structure according to the structural models of the written language. Likewise, such sentences as the following can hardly be called elliptical:

“There was no breeze came through the open window.” (A Canary For One by E. Hemingway);

“There's many a man in this Borough would be glad to have the blood that runs in my veins.” (Hatter's Castle by A. J. Cronin,).

The relative pronouns like “which” after “breeze”, or “who” after “a man in this Borough” could not be regarded as “omitted” because this is the norm of colloquial language. This is due to the standardizing power of the literary language.

As for Danish linguist O. Jespersen, in his analysis of such structures he writes: “If we speak here of “omission” or “sub–audition” or “ellipsis” the reader is apt to get the false impression that the fuller expression is the better one as being complete, and that the shorter expression is to some extent faulty or defective, or something that has come into existence in recent times out of slovenliness. This is wrong: the constructions are very old in the language and have not come into existence through the dropping of a previously necessary relative pronoun.” [2] There are some his examples:

“Bring him news will raise his drooping spirits.”;

“...or like the snow falls in the river.”;

“...when at her door arose a clatter might awake the dead.”.

Sometimes the reader can encounter such structures in literary texts. Even though they represent the lively norms of the spoken language, he or she is apt to regard them as bearing some definite stylistic function. On the one hand, it happens due to a psychological effect produced by the relative rarity of the construction. On the other hand, the reason for this is non–expectancy of any strikingly colloquial expression in literary narrative.

Being the property of colloquial language ellipsis does not express what can easily be supplied by the situation. This is perhaps the reason that elliptical sentences are rarely used as stylistic devices. Sometimes the omission of a link–verb adds emotional colouring and makes the sentence sound more emphatic, as in these lines from Byron:

“Thrice happy he, who, after a survey

Of the good company, can win a corner”;

“Nothing so difficult as a beginning.”;

“Denotes how soft the chin which bears his touch.”.

In this case the omission of the link–verbs in these sentences is not due to the requirements of the rhythm.

The importance of using ellipsis, or omission, stylistically, is that you can cover a lot of ground without getting bogged down in unnecessary details. When you are writing, you cannot include every detail all of the time. Whether you are using ellipsis in the larger stylistic sense or using the physical ellipsis points, this stylistic device helps to reduce clutter and sharpen the focus on the point you are trying to make.

References:

1. Galperin, I.R. Stylistics. Moscow,1977.

2. Jespersen O., Haislund N.A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles: Sounds and spellings. 1965.

3.Ellipsis. Available at: https://literaryterms.net/.

4. Stylistic Devices – Ellipsis. Available at: https://www.myenglishpages.com/. 

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