Stylistic Syntax

STYLISTIC SYNTAX
– Expressive means based upon absence of

logically indispensable (necessary)
elements.
– Expressive means based upon the
excessive use of speech elements.
– Expressive means consisting in an unusual
arrangement of linguistic elements.
– Expressive means based upon interaction
of syntactical forms.
Absence of Syntactical Elements
• elliptical sentences;
• unfinished sentences;
• nominative sentences
• constructions in which auxiliary elements
are missing
Ellipsis.
• “Please, sir, will you write to me the post
office. I don’t want my husband to know
that I’m – I’m -”
• “An hour and a half, five shillings, thank

you. And tomorrow at half past two, Miss
Collins...” (Galsworthy)
• “He became one of the prominent men of
the House. Spoke clearly and modestly,
and was never too long. Held the House
where men of higher abilities “bored” it ”
Unfinished sentences
(aposiopesis).
• “She had her lunches in the department-
store restaurant at a cost of sixty cents for
the week; dinners were one dollar five
cents. The evening papers ... came to six
cents; and Sunday papers... were ten
cents. The total amounts to 4 dollars 76
cents. Now, one had to buy clothes, and - ”
(O’Henry).
Nominative sentences.
• “London. Fog everywhere. Implacable
(неумолимый) November weather”.
• “Dusk – of a summer night”.
• “But if they should! If they should guess!
The horro! The flight! The exposure! The
police!...” (Dreiser).
Asyndeton.
• “You can’t tell whether you are eating
apple-pie or German sausage, or
strawberries and cream. It all seems
cheese. There is too much odour about
cheese” (Jerome).
Zeugma
• “At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed

and humor, put on kimono, airs, and the
water to boil for coffee” (O’Henry).
• “She dropped a tear and her pocket
handkerchief” (Dickens).
Excess of Syntactical Elements
• Repetition
• Framing
• Anadiplosis
• Prolepsis
• Polysyndeton
Repetition
• “Scroodge went to bed again, and thought,

and thought, and thought it over and over
and over”.
Framing
• “Never wonder. By means of addition,

subtraction, multiplication and division,
settle everything somehow, and never
wonder” (Dickens).
• “You’ve made a nice mess, you have...”
(Jerome)
Anadiplosis
• “With Bewick on my knee, I was then

happy; happy at least in my way” (Bronte).
Prolepsis
• “Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty days
and nights without waking up” (O’Henry).
• “Bolivar, he’s plenty tired, and he can’t
carry double” (O’Henry).
• “... I know the like of you are, I do” (Shaw).
Polysyndeton
• “And the rain descended and the floods
came, and the winds blew and beat upon
the house; and it fell; and great was the
fall of it” (Matthew).
Order of Speech Elements
• Stylistic Inversion:
• “They slid down” – “Down they slid”.
• “He had moccasins enchanted,

Magic moccasins of deer-skin...”
(Longfellow)
Interaction of Syntactical Structures
• Parallelism
• Chiasmus
• Anaphora
• Epiphora
Parallelism
• “The cock is crowing,
• The stream is flowing
• The small birds twitter,
• The lake doth glitter” (Wordsworth)
Chiasmus
• “The jail must have been the infirmary, the
infirmary must have been the jail…”
(Dickens).
Anaphora
• “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)
Epiphora
• “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)
The connection between Parts of the
Sentence
• Detachment
• Parenthetic Elements
Detachment
• “Smither should choose it for her at the
stores – nice and dappled” (Galsworthy)
• “Talent Mr. Micawber has, capital, Mr.

Micawber has not” (Dickens)
Parenthetic Elements
• 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
conspicuous, 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 an
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
Revaluation of Syntactical Categories
• Rhetorical Question:
• “If this belief from heaven be sent,

• If such be Nature’s holy plan,
• Have I not reason to lament
• What man has done of man?”
(Wordsworth)
Test 3: Stylistic Syntax
1. Elliptical sentences and nominative
sentences
a) perform the same functions;

b) perform different functions.
2. Asyndeton is used
a) to accelerate the tempo of the speech;

b) to characterize the emotional state of the
speaker;
c) to impart expressiveness to the speech.
Aposiopesis
a) a case when the speaker does not bring the

utterance up to the end overwhelmed by
emotions;
b) a deliberate abstention from bringing the
utterance up to the end;
c) a case when the speaker does not want to
finish the sentence or cannot finish the
sentence being overwhelmed by emotions.
4. Anadiplosis is based
a) upon the absence of the indispensable
elements in the sentence;
b) upon the interaction of syntactical
structures;
c) upon the excessive use of syntactical
elements.
5. Prolepsis is used by characters of literary
works
a) to make speech more expressive;
b) to emphasize the subject of speech;
c) to make the speech sound less formal.
6. In case of inversion the emphasized
element occupies
a) the initial position;
b) the final position instead of the initial
position;
c) either initial position or final position
instead of the initial position.
7. Parallelism is used
a) to make the recurring parts more

conspicuous than their surroundings;
b) to make the speech expressive;
8. Anaphora is used
a) to express the speaker’s attitude toward
the object of speech;
b) to imprint the elements repeated in the
reader’s mind;
c) to create poetic atmosphere.
9. The syntactical device used to reproduce
two parallel lines of thought is termed
a) detachment;
b) parenthesis.
10. The sentence “You don’t know what a
nice – beautiful, nice – gift I’ve got to
you” contains
a) repetition;
b) detachment;
c) repetition in the form of detachment.

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STYLISTIC SYNTAX

– Expressive means based upon absence of

• “An hour and a half, five shillings, thank

• “At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed

• “Scroodge went to bed again, and thought,

• “Never wonder. By means of addition,

• “With Bewick on my knee, I was then

• “They slid down” – “Down they slid”.

• “He had moccasins enchanted,

• “Talent Mr. Micawber has, capital, Mr.

• to reproduce two parallel lines of thought, two

• to avoid monotonous repetition of similar

• to impart colloquial character to the

• “If this belief from heaven be sent,

a) perform the same functions;

a) to accelerate the tempo of the speech;

a) a case when the speaker does not bring the

a) to make the recurring parts more

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