11. Syntactical sd. Inversion, Parallel Construction.

Stylistic syntactical patterns may be viewed as variants of the general syntactical models of the language and are the more obvious and conspic­uous if presented not as isolated elements or accidental usages, but as groups easily observable and lending themselves to generalization.

Word order is a crucial syntactical problem in many languages. Inverted word-order, or inversion, is one of the forms of what are known as emphatic constructions. What is generally called traditional word-order is unemphatic construction.

Emphatic constructions have so far been regarded as non-typical structures and therefore are considered as violations of the regular word-.order in the sentence. But in practice these structures are as common as the mixed or traditional word-order structures.

In modern English and American poetry, as has been shown elsewhere, there appears a definite tendency to experiment with the word-order to the extent which may even render the message unintelligi­ble, In this case there may be an almost unlimited number of rearrange­ments of the members of the sentence.

Parallel construction is a device which may be encoun­tered not so much in the sentence as in the macro-structures (Supra-phrasal units).

Parallel constructions are often backed up by repetition of words (lexical repetition) and conjunctions and prepositions (polysyndeton). Pure parallel construction, however, does not depend on any other kind of repetition but the repetition of the syntactical design of the sentence. Parallel constructions may be partial or complete.

Parallel construction is most frequently used in enumeration, anti­thesis and in climax, thus consolidating the general effect achieved by these stylistic devices.

Parallel construction is used in different styles of writing with slightly different functions. When used in the matter-of-fact styles, it carries, in the main, the idea of semantic equality of the parts, as in scientific prose, where the logical principle of arranging ideas predomi­nates. In the belles-lettres style parallel construction carries an emotive function.

"And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot." (Shakespeare)

12. Repetition, Climax, Antithesis

When repetition used as a stylistic device, it aims at logical emphasis, an emphasis necessary to fix the "attention of the reader on the key-word of the utterance.

The semantic nuances of different compositional structures of repeti­tion have been little looked into. But even a superficial examination will show that framing makes the whole utterance more compact and complete. Framing is most effective in singling out paragraphs.

Like many stylistic devices, repetition is polyfunctional. The func­tions enumerated do not cover all its varieties. One of those already

mentioned, the rhythmical function, must not be under-estimated when studying the effects produced by repetition.

There is a variety of repetition which we shall call "root-repetition". "He loves a dodge for its own sake; being...—the dodgerest of all the dodgers" (Dickens)

Climax is an arrangement of sentences (or of the homogeneous parts of one sentence) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance, as in:

"It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city". Each successive unit is perceived as stronger than the preceding one. Of course, there are no objective linguistic criteria to estimate the degree of importance or significance of each constituent. A gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways: logical, emotional and quantitative.

Antithesis. In order to characterize a thing or phenomenon from a specific point of view, it may be necessary not to find points of resemblance or associa­tion between it and some other thing or phenomenon, but to find points of sharp contrast, that is, to set one against the other, for example: "A saint abroad, and a devil at home"

A line of demarcation must be drawn between logical opposition and stylistic opposition. Any opposition will be based on the contrast­ing features of two objects. These contrasting features are represented in pairs of words which we call antonyms, provided that all the prop­erties of the two objects in question may be set one against another, as 'saint' —'devil', 'reign'—'serve', 'hell'—'heaven'.