Morphological

Stylistics

 Morphological stylistics deals with
morphological expressive means and stylistic
devices.

 Words of all parts of speech have a great

stylistic potential.

 Being placed in an unusual syntagmatic

environment which changes their canonized
grammatical characteristics and combinability,
they acquire stylistic significance.
 The central notion of morphological stylistics is
the notion of transposition.

 Transposition is a divergence between the

traditional usage of a neutral word and its
situational (stylistic) usage.
 Words of every part of speech are united by
their semantic and grammatical properties.

 General lexico-grammatical meaning of nouns is

substantivity, i. e. the ability to denote objects
or abstract notions.

 Due to the diverse nature of substantivity,

nouns are divided into proper, common,
specific, abstract, material and collective.
Cases of transposition emerge, in particular,
when specific nouns are used according to
the rules of proper nouns usage, or vice
versa.

It results in creation of stylistic devices

named antonomasia of personification.
 Besides general lexico-grammatical meaning,
nouns possess grammatical meanings of the
category of number and the category of case.

 These meanings may also be used for stylistic

objectives.

 According to the category of number, nouns are

classified into countable and uncountable.
 Each group has its own regularities of usage.

 When these regularities are broken for stylistic

reasons, speech becomes expressive.

 Uncountable singularia tantum nouns, or

countable nouns in the singular, occasionally
realizing the meaning of more than oneness,
evoke picturesque connotations.
 Normally, the genitive case form is a form of
animate nouns.
 When inanimate nouns are used in this form,
their initial meaning of inanimateness is
transposed.

 In such cases they render the meanings of time

or distance (mile's walk, hour's time), part of a
whole (book's page, table's leg), or qualitative
characteristics (plan's failure, winter's
snowdrifts, music's voice)
Stylistic potential of nouns is significantly
reinforced by transpositions in the usage of
articles as noun-determiners.

Such transpositions occur against generally

accepted normative postulates which run:
articles are not used with names of persons
and animals, some classes of geographical
names, abstract nouns and names of
material.
Uncommon usage of articles aims at
importing specific shades of meaning into
speech.

Thus, the indefinite article combined with

names of persons may denote one
representative of a family, a person
unknown to the communicants, a temporary
feature of character.
 Not less expressive are cases when the name of
a person is used as a common noun preceded by
the indefinite article.
 Stylistic usage of the definite article takes
place when names of persons are modified by
limiting attributes, when a proper name
denotes the whole family, or when a name of a
person is modified by a descriptive attribute
denoting a permanent feature of character.

 Suchlike deviations in the usage of articles are

possible with other semantic classes of nouns:
geographical names, abstract and material
nouns.
 Transposition of verbs is even more varied than
that of nouns.
I
 t is explained by a greater number of
grammatical categories the meanings of which
may be transposed.
 Most expressive are tense forms, mood forms
and voice forms.
 One of peculiar features of English tense forms
is their polysemantism.
 The same form may realize various meanings in
speech.
 Deviation from the general (most frequently
realized) meaning makes verbs stylistically
coloured.
 Commonly, the present continuous tense
denotes an action which takes place at the
moment of speaking.
 But it may also denote a habitual action, an
action which occupies a long period of time,
and an action of the near future.
 In such cases the present continuous tense
becomes synonymous with the present or future
indefinite.
 But there is a difference.
 There is a rule that verbs of sense perception
and mental activity are not used in the
continuous tense forms.

 This rule is often broken by the speaker

intentionally or subconsciously.

 In both cases verbal forms convey additional

stylistic meanings of subjective modality
 One of peculiar verbal transpositions is the
change of temporary planes of narration when
events of the past or future are described by
present tense forms.

 Such transposition brightens the narration,

raises its emotional tension, expresses intrigue,
makes the continuity of events visual and
graphic.
 Transposition is not the only way to make verbs
expressive.
 A good many verbal forms are expressive in
themselves.
 The imperative mood forms are not just
commands, invitations, requests or prohibitions.
 They are a perfect means of rendering an
abundance of human emotions.
 A wide range of subjunctive mood forms offers
a good stylistic choice of synonymous ways to
verbalize one and the same idea.
 General lexico-grammatical meaning of
adjectives is that of qualitativeness.

 Qualitative adjectives are always estimative,

that is why they are used as epithets and can
form degrees of comparison.
 Relative adjectives normally do not form
degrees of comparison and serve as logical
(non-stylistic) attributes.

 However, they may be occasionally transposed

into qualitative.

 Such transposition imports originality and

freshness in speech
 Expressiveness of adjectives may be as well
enhanced by non-grammatical transpositions in
the formation of the degrees of comparison,
when well-known rules of their formation are
intentionally violated.
 Expressive devices may be created by
transposition of pronouns.

 When objective forms of personal pronouns are

used predicatively instead of nominative forms,
sentences obtain colloquial marking.
 The meaning of the pronoun I may be
contextually rendered by the pronouns we,
you, one, he, she and others.

 The so-called "scientific we" is used in scientific

prose instead of I for modesty reasons.

 The same replacement in a routine conversation

creates a humoristic effect
 When the pronoun you is replaced by the
pronoun one, the statement becomes
generalized, its information being projected not
only to the listeners, but to the speaker
himself.
 Stylistic effects may also be achieved by the
usage of archaic pronouns.
Phonetic And Graphic
Expressive Means
And Stylistic Devices

 Stylistically marked phonemes do not exist.
 Consequently, there are no expressive means on
the phonological language level.
 Nevertheless, specific combinations of sounds
may create different speech effects and
devices.
 Phonetic stylistic devices belong to versification
and instrumentation types.

 Versification is the art of writing verses.

 It is the imaginative expression of emotion,

thought, or narrative, mostly in metrical form
and often using figurative language.
 Poetry is actually the earliest form of
literature, and was created precisely to be
spoken - in the days before many could read.

 Poetry has traditionally been distinguished from

prose (ordinary written language) by rhyme or
the rhythmical arrangement of words (metre).
 The main concepts of versification are rhyme
and rhythm.

 Rhyme is the accord of syllables in words.

 Such an accord is met at the end of two parallel
lines in verses.

 Rhyme is a sound organizer, uniting lines into

stanzas.

 Rhyme is created according to several patterns.

 Vertically, there are such rhymes: adjacent (aa,

bb), cross (ab, ab) and reverse (ab, ba).
 According to the variants of stress in the words
being rhymed, rhymes are classified into male
(the last syllables of the rhymed words are
stressed), female (the next syllables to the last
are stressed) and dactylic (the third syllables
from the end are stressed).
 Rhythm is a recurring stress pattern in poetry.
 It is an even alternation of stressed and
unstressed syllables.
 Lines in verses are built with poetic feet.
 A foot is a combination of one stressed and one
or two unstressed syllables.
 The most popular poetic feet are trochaic foot,
iambus, dactyl, amphibrach, and anapest.
Instrumentation is the art of selecting and
combining sounds in order to make
utterances expressive and melodic.
Instrumentation unites three basic stylistic
devices: alliteration, assonance and
onomatopoeia.
 Alliteration is a stylistically motivated
repetition of consonants.

 The repeated sound is often met at the

beginning of words.

 Alliteration is often used in children's rhymes,

because it emphasizes rhythm and makes
memorizing easier.
 The same effect is employed in advertising, so
that slogans will stick in people's minds.

 Assonance is a stylistically motivated repetition

of stressed vowels.

 The repeated sounds stand close together to

create a euphonious effect and rhyme.
 Just like alliteration, assonance makes texts
easy to memorize.
 It is also popular in advertising for the same
reason.
 Assonance is seldom met as an independent
stylistic device.
 It is usually combined with alliteration,
rhyming, and other devices
 Onomatopoeia is a combination of sounds which
imitate natural sounds: wind wailing, sea
murmuring, rustling of leaves, bursts of
thunder, etc.

 Words which represent this figure of speech

have aural similarity with the things they
describe.
 Animal calls and sounds of insects are evoked
onomatopoeically in all languages.

 Onomatopoeia is used for emphasis or stylistic

effect.

 It is extensively featured in children's rhymes

and poetry in general.
 Expressiveness of speech may be also
significantly enhanced by such phonetic means
as tone.
 To the linguist "tone" means the quality of
sound produced by the voice in uttering words.

 In a general sense, tone is the attitude of the

speaker or writer as revealed in the choice of
vocabulary or the intonation of speech.
 Written or spoken communication might be
described as having a tone which is, for
instance, ironic, serious, flippant, threatening,
light-hearted, or pessimistic.
 Attitude expressed in tone may be rendered
con-sciously or unconsciously.
 It could be said that there is no such thing as a
text or verbal utterance without a tone.
 In most cases, tone is either taken for granted,
or perceived unconsciously.
 Basic notions of graphic expressive means are
punctuation, orthography or spelling, text
segmentation, and type.

 Punctuation is used in writing to show the

stress, rhythm and tone of the spoken word.

 It also aims at clarifying the meaning of

sentences.
There are such common marks of
punctuation: the full stop [.], the comma
[, ], the colon [: ], the semicolon [; ],
brackets [()], dash [ - ], hyphen [ - ], the
exclamation mark [! ], the oblique stroke
[/ ]„ the interrogative (question) mark [ ? ],
inverted commas (quotation marks) [" "],
suspension marks [...], the apostrophe [ ' ].
 Text segmentation means the division of texts
into smaller segments: paragraphs, chapters,
sections and others.

 Some of the segments start with overlines

(headings or headlines).
A paragraph is a group of sentences which
deal with one topic and express a more or
less completed idea or thought.
The sentences in paragraphs are related to
each other to produce an effect of unity.
Paragraphs are used to divide a long piece of
writing into separate sections.
They give rhythm, variety and pace to
writing.
Chapters and sections are major text
segments.
They may be compared with fragments of
mosaic, which form the whole picture when
put together.
A heading is the name of a text or its
segment.
It tends to disclose the plot of narration.
It should be garish and catching in order to
attract the potential reader's attraction.
Text segmentation is just one of the
components of layout.
Layout is the physical organization of a text
on the page, the screen, or any other
medium of written communication.
It refers to the visual conventions of
arranging texts to assist reading and
comprehension.
Good layout includes effective use of the
following common features: page margins,
paragraphs, justification, type style, italics,
capitals, indentation, line spacing,
centering, type size, bold, underlining.
There are particular conventions of layout in
each functional style.
Some of conventions are based purely on the
function of the text, and some on tradition.
The modern trend is towards layout which
results in fast and easy reading of the page.
Layout complements content in efficient
communication.
It facilitates the reading and the
comprehensibility of the text.