Linguostylistics: Theory and method 9783111714844, 9789027931757

Table of contents :
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF AUTHORS
FOREWORD
PART I. STYLE AS “LANGUAGE”
PART II. STYLE AS “SPEECH”
PART III. STYLE IN TERMS OF MAJOR SYNTAX
PART IV. THE LINGUOSTYLISTICS OF CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
APPENDIX
REFERENCES
INDEX OF NAMES
INDEX OF TERMS

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JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE N I C O L A I VAN W I J K D E D I C A T A edenda curai C. H. VAN S C H O O N E V E L D Indiana University

Series Minor, 181

LINGUOSTYLISTICS: THEORY AND METHOD

by

Olga Akhmanova

1976

MOUTON THE HAGUE - PARIS

© Copyright 1976 Mouton & Co. B.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

ISBN

9 0 279 3 1 7 5 5

Printed in the Netherlands

TABLE O F CONTENTS

FOREWORD

ix

PART I. STYLE AS "LANGUAGE" 1. The Subject of Linguostylistics 2. Synonymy as a Linguostylistic Category 3. The Stylistic Functioning of Linguistic Units 4. The S t r u c t u r e of Inherent Connotation

3 6 15 21

P A R T II. STYLE AS " S P E E C H " 1. The E s s e n t i a l C a t e g o r i e s of the Speech Event 2. The M e t a s e m i o t i c s of Speech 3. " U n d e r s t a n d i n g " as a Linguostylistic P r o b l e m 4. The Functions of Speech 5. Is it P o s s i b l e to E m u l a t e the Style of a G r e a t Work of Fiction? PART III.

" S T Y L E " IN TERMS OF MAJOR SYNTAX

PART IV. THE LINGUOSTYLISTICS O F CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION 1. The Semantic Aspect 2. The M e t a s e m i o t i c Aspect

29 32 40 46 51 57

75 92

APPENDIX 1. Norm and Deviation 2. Variation and Acceptability

109 113

REFERENCES

117

INDEX OF NAMES

119

INDEX OF TERMS

121

LIST OF AUTHORS:

Olga Akhmanova, Marie Dobbs, Olga Grisìna, Irina G'ubbenet, Rolandas F . Idzelis, A. N. Marcenko, L'udmila Minajeva, Tatjana Siskina.

FOREWORD

The aim of the present manual - one in a s e r i e s of books specially prepared for Mature Students, i . e . educated philologists and experienced t e a c h e r s , who joined the English Department of the Philological Faculty of the Moscow State University for a brief period of advanced study - is to give an idea of recent r e s e a r c h in the field in question, always accompanying theoretical disquisitions with plenty of textual material to be used at the respective s e m i n a r s . In this way the ontological approach (Theory) and the heuristic one (Method) are most conveniently taken c a r e of and presented as the dialectical unity they are. The notion of "recency" of r e s e a r c h being a relative one, a part of Olga Akhmanova's course on style was included, for without it the m o r e advanced p a r t s of the book would lack coherence. To this part belong Chapters 1 and 3 of P a r t I titled "The Subject of Linguostylist i c s " and "The Stylistic Functioning of Linguistic Units", as well as Chapter 1 of P a r t II "The Essential Categories of the Speech Event", Chapter 3 of P a r t II " "Understanding" as a Linguostylistic Problem" and Chapter 4 of P a r t II "The Functions of Speech". All these chapt e r s , originally prepared for publication in "The principles and methods . . . " of 1970 were carefully amended and enlarged by Rolandas F. Idzelis for the present edition. Immediately after the f i r s t introductory chapter "The Subject of Linguostylistics" comes the contribution of A. N. Marcenko called "Synonymy as a Linguostylistic Category". Placing this chapter at the very beginning of the manual is justified because traditionally "synonymy" is assumed to be the basic category of stylistic d i f f e r e n tiation: to many people "style" means choice of synonyms or choice of semantically equivalent words and expressions because of the d e s i r e to convey certain connotations or adapt the information to be passed on to certain specific conditions of time, place and purport. The difference between inherent and adherent stylistic connotation was discussed in general in Chapter 3 of P a r t I. The investigation of the problem now being c a r r i e d on by Irina G'ubbenet and L'udmila Minajeva has enabled us to elaborate very considerably this aspect of our subject. Hence chapter 4 of P a r t I, called "The Structure of Inherent Connotation", where the evaluative adjectives of Modern English are analysed and discussed from the point of view of their s t r u c t u r e . Thus P a r t I "Style as 'Language' ", meaning the " i n -

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variant" features or units placed by the language in question at the disposal of the researcher, is brought to a close. Part II "Style as 'Speech' " begins, as already mentioned, with "The Essential Categories of the Speech Event". As far as Chapter 2 "The Metasemiotics of Speech" is concerned, a few additional words are required. In this part of the manual some of the ideas of Olga Akhmanova's original course were developed and evolved in connection with research conducted by Rolandas F. Idzelis. It should therefore be regarded as their joint effort, because although the underlying ideas here (as well as in other parts of the book) follow Olga Akhmanova's theory of style, the preparation of her lectures for publication and above all, the choice, organization and discussion of the concrete linguistic material included, would not have been practicable without the participation of Rolandas F. Idzelis. Chapter 5 "Is it Possible to Emulate the Style of a Great Work of Fiction?" by Marie Dobbs, from the point of view of linguostylistics is an interesting experiment and invaluable material for further research. Part III " 'Style' in Terms of Major Syntax" is based on Tatjana Siskina's research into the prosodic and, more specifically, rhythmical structure of the stylistically formatted sentences of the three basic types which were first singled out and described by Simeon Potter (in the book "Our Language"). It should be noted in this connection that Tatjana Siskina's work is representative of the general trend of linguistic studies at the English Department of the Moscow State University where syntax is studied not on the basis of the printed word, but by means of a detailed analysis of the actual tonetic and prosodic configurations and contours as actually heard. It should also be noted that all the findings which had been formulated exclusively on the basis of more traditional investigations were fully supported by prosodic and rhythmical analysis. Part IV "The Linguostylistics of Cross-Cultural Communication", which was written by Rolandas F. Idzelis, is divided into two parts: Chapter 1 "The Semantic Aspect" and Chapter 2 "The Metasemiotic Aspect". Although Henry Sweet had spoken of the importance of this aspect of linguostylistic research almost eighty years ago, very little has so far been done along these lines. It is therefore deemed necessary to dwell on the subject at considerable length, drawing as distinct a line as possible at the present stage of research between the cruder semantic and the finer metasemiotic distinctions. Pages 99-100, on hesitation phenomena, were written by Olga Grisina, who studied it from the phonetic, phonological, semantic and sociolinguistic points of view. The wider syntactic significance of hesitation phenomenon is explained by L'udmila Minajeva in connection with her work in l e x i cological phonetics. The two short chapters "Norm and Deviation" and "Variation and Acceptability" could have been developed to form a separate part of the present manual. This, however, would require special investigation on a scale which could not be fitted into the short time interval in the course of which the book was to be completed. These two chapters were therefore relegated to an Appendix.

xi The book was prepared for publication by Rolandas F. Idzelis and Tatjana Siskina. Olga Akhmanova Rolandas F. Idzelis Tatjana Siskina

PART I STYLE AS "LANGUAGE"

1

THE SUBJECT OF LINGUOSTYLISTICS

The object of linguistic study is so varied and multiform that it is difficult to give a simple and watertight definition of style. Nevertheless we cannot proceed without accepting what may be taken as a working definition. In connection with this two basic questions have to be answered: (1) what is stylistics and style generally? and (2) what is linguostylistics and linguistic style, or style in language? The concept of style presupposes the existence of objects which are essentially identical but which differ in some secondary, subservient feature or features. Thus, for instance, we speak of the style of a building, a hair-style, e t c . , only if the existence of certain features common to all buildings, hair-styles, e t c . , is assumed, i . e . if there exist " p r i m a r y " objects such as houses, heads of hair, e t c . , in general. In other words, style is a concept which can be applied to any two or m o r e objects, provided they are essentially the same, while differing in some characteristics which are more or less s u p e r ficial in the sense that they do not form part of the objects' basic properties. What has just been said can be exemplified in the following manner: if somebody says: "The style of this church is Gothic" (or baroque), this pronouncement implies that there are other churches in the world which are not Gothic or baroque but a r e , nevertheless, churches; or if somebody says: "I like the style of h e r d r e s s " , this again will mean that there are other d r e s s e s of a different style. It should be noted that speaking of style usually involves different attitudes on the part of the speaker and/or overtones, attaching to the linguistic expression used. The concept of linguistic style (or style in language) p r e s e n t s a specific problem. A possible definition of linguistic style will have to be based on the fundamental difference between language on the one hand, and all other imaginable objects man has to deal with, on the other. Language differs from all those other objects because of its very specific function which places it in a class by itself. This specific function is communication. Since our task h e r e is to discuss style in language, it may well be asked: what is the ontology of language ? Where does language exist ? How is it apprehended ? How is it that we can learn facts about language ? The answer to these questions can be summed up as follows: language exists in speech. Its only manifestation or realization is in and through speech. It is in speech that the basic patterns and units of language r e c u r , are regularly reproduced.

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It would be a great mistake, however, to believe that speech is confined to a m e r e reproduction of the same set of units. A m e r e (and unimaginative) reproduction of a given set of units is characteristic of codes ( e . g . the Morse code). All kinds of codes (cryptographic ones among others) play a very important role in the life of man. Great quantities of information are passed on by means of codes. Nevertheless a code is no m o r e than a set of rules which correlate a message with a combination of discernible signals. By using the sets of rules the receiver of the message unambiguously reconstructs its original f o r m . Thus, for instance, the electric signal: long impulse + two short ones (in graphic form - . . ) corresponds to a certain letter of the alphabet (d), and is therefore registered as such by the receiver. The main feature which distinguishes language from code is the constant interaction between language and speech, the "code" and the " m e s sage". In the case of codes in the proper sense of the word the two a r e completely independent from one another. In contrast with codes natural human languages are not merely reproduced in speech. Their rules cannot be viewed as a m e r e reproduction of r e c u r r e n t patterns. In so f a r as language exists only in and through speech, it is moulded, modified, enriched, developed by the latter. It follows that in actual linguistic activity there is always something "new" or unexpected, something specifically created f o r the needs of a given context of situation. Thus not only does language exist in and through speech; it is for this very reason that it is in a state of flux, in a state of constant and u n r e m i t ting change. It follows from what has just been said that language cannot be r e garded simply as a "system of signs". Without entering into a d i s cussion on the tenability of this definition, the following point must be emphasized. It has often been claimed that almost any object can be used and/or apprehended as a sign of something. Thus, f o r instance, dark clouds are a sign of coming rain, footsteps on the s t a i r s a r e a sign of an approaching visitor, black clothes may be a sign of m o u r n ing, etc. Clouds, footsteps or clothes may function as signs and may convey specific information; in contrast with these, linguistic units know no other form of existence: they are essentially p a r t s of a c o m municative system. To convey information is their essential and p r i m a r y function. If they acquire symbolic value, if they are used for other purposes - these always come as something additional, subservient to their main and constitutive function. 1* It is this " a d ditional" function which is the subject of linguostylistics. NOTE 1* The t e r m s "sign" and symbol" are often used indiscriminately. In a s t r i c t e r sense the difference between the two is as follows: a sign is a m e r e indication, an a r b i t r a r y combination of sounds or ciphers; a symbol is a token, which is chosen to represent something because it b e a r s a certain resemblance to it, because it can naturally stand for what it represents or symbolizes. Thus, for example, the h a m m e r and sickle of our national emblem symbolize the union of industrial

and agricultural labour; they are a symbol of this union.

2 SYNONYMY AS A LINGUOSTYLISTIC CATEGORY

It is usually believed that the main task of a student of linguostylistics consists in listing words and constructions which would be applicable to the same referent (or the same underlying content, or "things = meant" and differ only in connotations or stylistic overtones. Thus, f o r instance, we learn that a "horse" or a " m a r e " (a she-horse) can be described as a " s c r e w " , or that one can speak of "somebody dying", or "somebody passing away" (the latter being "elevated"), or " s o m e body kicking the bucket" (the same thing in slang, or "substandard" English). Assumptions of this kind have been taken for granted so often and for such a long time that the student of linguostylistics a c cepts them as well-established fact and is not supposed to have to go any f u r t h e r . Nothing, however, could be f u r t h e r from the truth. To begin with, after all these y e a r s and after so many books on the subject do we know, even approximately, the number of those interesting "variations on a theme", the "die-pass away-kick the bucket" type of oppositions? Supposing one asked even an erudite, a highly qualified specialist in synonymy (and presumably in linguostylistics): how many are there of those neatly arranged triplets or triads ? It i s , of course, quite clear that not even the most competent p e r sons can give anything like an answer. How many: five, ten, twentyfive, one hundred, one thousand? Unfortunately, no investigation in t e r m s of even symptomatic statistics appears to have been attempted along these lines and there is no information on the subject to go by. True, large numbers of synonymous s e r i e s of the "leave-abandonquit" kind do most readily come to mind. However, the relation b e tween their m e m b e r s is by no means the same as that between "die, pass away" and "kick the bucket". It may even be said to be c o m pletely different because there a r e very few among s e r i e s of this kind in which the underlying meaning, the actual semantic content, is absolutely the same. There is no doubt whatsoever that the triad "diepass away-kick the bucket" is an excellent example of a relationship which, theoretically speaking, is quite tenable. It is one of these cases which gives a nice neat example of what linguostylistics is about. The same "thing-meant" can be r e f e r r e d to by means of each one of these three quite different words or word-combinations, the difference b e tween them being not in the actual semantic content, but in the s t y l i s tic connotations that cling to them, their metasemiotic functioning. But can they be regarded as in any way typical ? If one were to rummage through a sufficient number of books on style at least another dozen of triads of this kind could

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be discovered. But what is a dozen " t r i a d s " compared to the vocabulary of the English language with its c i r c a five hundred thousand words ? The innumerable "dictionaries of synonyms" a r e collections of words, which were brought or strung together on the false assumption that they "mean the same thing" - another misconception so difficult to dispel. They b e a r on the same general idea and a r e best d e scribed as "thematic groups". As f a r as linguistics is concerned, it is difficult to think of a better definition of synonyms that just "those members of a thematic group which (a) belong to one and the same part of speech and (b) stand so close to each other, as f a r as their lexical meaning is concerned, that their differentiation or identification requires special r e s e a r c h " . 1* In other words, synonyms are those m e m b e r s of a thematic group which are semantically so closely connected with each other as to r e quire special explanation in o r d e r to be able to discriminate between them. But even so, from the point of view of linguostylistics we are at a dead end. How do we explain the use of "synonymity" (or choice) as the basic category of linguostylistics? Even having found, say, a dozen triads of the "die-pass away-kick the bucket" type in o r d e r to explain to the l e a r n e r what they, theoretically speaking, could be, we would still not know what the actual state of affairs i s , how the triads really work in practice. What, then, is the course to take, how should we proceed if we want to try and really learn something about synonyms as a linguostylistic category ? Obviously, the f i r s t step is to try and see what those " t r i a d s " a r e and how many of them t h e r e a r e in the language - approximately at least. We can no longer get away with half a dozen examples, e s pecially if they a r e mainly the same from book to book. This preoccupation comes f i r s t because it is assumed that stylistic synonyms 2* (and synonymy in general) a r e , as it were, the mainstay of the p r i n ciples and methods of linguostylistic r e s e a r c h . It would be dangerous f o r the discipline as a whole if the nature and scope of lexical synonymy turned out to be questionable, doubtful, surprisingly unclear. That is why this may be regarded as the main and most important point. We have allowed ourselves to speak with so much conviction of the scarcity of stylistic synonyms in the "absolute" sense because the following list appears practically to exhaust the examples discoverable in current manuals and textbooks on the subject. 3* The material is presented according to the following plan: 1. " T r i a d s " , i . e . words used to illustrate the basic trichotomy: neutral, "elevated" (also "bookish", "literary", e t c . ) and "colloquial", i . e . "below neutral", "informal", etc. neutral

elevated

colloquial

afraid agreement child courage

fearful covenant infant valour, prowess

yellow deal kid pluck

8

neutral

elevated

colloquial

drunk eat face father girl head horse kill meet nonsense

intoxicated partake countenance parent maiden headpiece steed slay encounter bombast

tipsy gobble phiz dad (daddy) lass g a r r e t , pate nag make away with, do in come across rot

2. Those of the triads which can be further "developed" stylistically, because there exist words which can be regarded as absolutely synonymous to the above on the levels dubbed "archaic" and "slang". Thus, for instance: neutral

elevated

colloquial

slang

archaic

afraid courage drunk face girl head horse kill

fearful valour intoxicated countenance maiden headpiece steed slay

funky guts soused mug skirt nob, onion plug, screw bump off

afeard dauntlessness

nonsense

bombast

yellow pluck tipsy phiz lass g a r r e t , pate nag make away with, do in rot

favour damsel sconce courser

bosh

However important the questions discussed above may be, they do not exhaust this very difficult subject, for there a r e many other problems which have to be taken up in connection with synonyms and synonymity. Among these the problem of method stands out. It is obviously not enough to understand the situation and ask rhetorical questions which remain unanswered. We must try to say something positive about the possible methods of linguostylistic r e s e a r c h in the field of synonymy, of actually proving the theory of "synonymity" as a branch of linguostylistics or, at least, as one of the most important aspects of linguostylistics. When we look at the great amount of work already done, at the m a s s e s of material already collected with this aspect in view, we find ourselves confronted with the stupendous difficulty of keeping the semantic and the metasemiotic levels apart. If we discuss synonymity as a lexicological problem, we must try to put the purely metasemiotic approach, as it were, on one side. In lexicology the problem of synonymity could, f i r s t and foremost, be studied as such, irrespective of the "poetic" or "metasemiotic" function of speech, which, up to a point, could then be ignored: it follows from what has been said above that the attempt to associate synonymous relations too closely with

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certain metasemiotic "intensions" has not been successful. Otherwise stated, if what was said about the limited number of examples travelling from one book on linguostylistics to another is true, it would be well to refuse to have anything to do with the "metasemiotic" function; synonyms would then be studied "ideographically" without reference to poetry or higher forms of discourse in general. If, however, the task in hand is a chapter on synonyms in a book on linguostylistics, synonymy could not be discussed without due attention to the "metasemiotic" function of speech. At the same time we may be justified in assuming that linguostylistics is always there even when, on the surface, little attention is being given to the subject: in a covert way metasemiotics is always there, stylistic connotation is ever present. Let us take as an example several "translations" into "Basic English" where the verb "to see" is invariably substituted f o r all the rest of its "synonyms" (such as behold, descry, detect, discern, observe, p e r ceive, remark, view) by the writers of the different "digests": 4* In the original behold, descry, detect, discern, observe, perceive, remark, view.

In the "digest" - see

1. . . . in heaven there is laid up a pattern of it for him who wishes to behold it, and, b e holding, to organize himself accordingly. ( D . V . R . P. , 334)

1. . . . its pattern is already there in heaven for him to see who so desires; and, seeing it, he makes himself its citizen. ( R . R . P . , 184)

2. . . . I descried a small island about half a league to the northwest. ( S . G . T . , 64)

2. . . . I saw a small island about a mile and a half to the northwest. ( S . G . L . L . , 99)

3. . . . you will easily detect five such cases of unusual crowding. ( P . G . B . , 261)

3. . . . you will quickly see five places where the signs are uncommonly near together. ( P . G . I . , 67)

4. . . . and the motion of the minute-hand, which he could easily discern.. .

4. . . . and at the motion of the minute-hand, which he saw without any trouble. . .

5. After I had observed the outrageous usage of the three men by the insolent seamen, I observed the fellows run scattering about the land.. . ( D . R . C . , 324)

5. After I had seen how cruel the rough seamen were to the three men, I saw them go in all directions over the island. . . ( D . R . C . L . , 71)

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6. . . . the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all... (D. V . R . P . , 238)

6. . . . in the field of deep knowledge the last thing to be seen, and hardly seen, is the idea of the good. When that is seen, our decision has to be that it is truly the cause. . . ( R . R . P . , 134)

7. . . . he failed to r e m a r k that he was fated therein to devour his own children. ( D . V . R . P . , 368)

7. . . . he took it without examination, not seeing that he was fated by it to eat his own children. ( R . R . P . , 208)

8. The lanes and alleys which I could not enter, but only viewed them as I passed. ( S . G . T . , 30) 5*

8. The narrow s t r e e t s , into which I was unable to go, but only saw when I went by. (S.G. L . L . , 54)

By comparing the originals with the "digests" the r e a d e r will form a sufficiently clear idea of the difference between words which belong to the more elevated f o r m s of speech (and possess a certain positive literary connotation or function, a clearly defined elevated m e t a semiotic character, and neutral words which a r e every man's words and which are used as ordinary currency, so to speak. The difference between the attitude to these two kinds of words could be compared with, for example, on the one hand, that of the numismatist who collects r a r e coins and makes specific use of them for aesthetic or other reasons, and that of the ordinary man, the man in the s t r e e t , on the other, who is interested in coins only insofar as they are money and can serve as currency and help him get what he requires for his e v e r y day life. Although the method of comparing original compositions with their "digests" appears to be helpful and takes us a long way towards d i s covering what the importance of synonymy to linguistics really is, it is by no means the only method or way. As we know, one of the most commonly used stylistic devices is what could best be described as "synonymic condensation". 6* To what has already been explained in that book, we must now add the following considerations: should there not be present in "condensations" of this kind a certain " d i r e c tionality", a "movement from left to right", carrying, as it were, the r e a d e r up to the c l i m a x ? We could even go so f a r as to suggest, theoretically speaking, that the f i r s t word should be the "weakest" of the two, three or m o r e , and that (if we are dealing with the work of a good writer) it would be quite natural for him to string on more powerful and metasemiotically m o r e impressive words as he goes on. But this does not appear to mean (as we shall see from the material below) that the climax is reached when the most "poetic" or the most "elevated" word is finally introduced. More than that: in situations of this kind there is sure to be an o v e r -

11 lapping of completely different aspects, of completely different categories. Thus, a word may be reserved for the finale because it is the most expressive one of the lot, but in the last account the word, far from being "poetic" or "elevated", may turn out to be downright vulgar. Whether this is actually the case or not remains a question. However that may be, the category of climax as a stylistic device has been prominent for millennia. Already the ancient Greeks and Romans knew about it and understood that a good speaker does not " f i r e all his big guns" at the beginning: the "big shot" is reserved for a later stage when all the preliminary "little shots" have already been used up. Theoretically speaking, we could assume that the "direction" should be from a neutral word towards a stylistically coloured one. But whether these theoretical considerations are borne out by actual facts remains to be seen. Let us begin with pairs of synonymous homogeneous parts. Thus, for instance: she must hate and detest; she had yearned and craved for sympathy; the young man looked scared and frightened; reckless mishaps and misfortunes; the jokes were tame and stale; with all her might and strength; tell me all and everything; in a dreadful state of doubt and uncertainty; in such times of misery and destitution; he left more sad and downcast; a great state of agitation and excitement; a dense and stupid policeman; full of the most delightful hopes and e x pectations ; full of offensive personal allusions and hints; with constant care and assiduity; the crowd looked on with awe and wonder; you must be meek and humble; I beg and implore you; it's all right and proper; you are famous and celebrated; a full and complete version; with a swift and rapid step; with the greatest caution and circumspection; I'm sure and certain; I have committed a hundred mistakes and blunders; to throw spell and incantation over the soldiers; the same thoughts and meditations; we require and demand; the child is sacrificed and offered up to fate; to be very critical upon her behaviour and deportment; he cursed and swore; striving to soothe and comfort; she sat quiet and still; a calm and quiet grief; he is false and deceitful; they were completely wrong and mistaken; he invents and devises somewhat of his own; a woman who officiated as guide and cicerone; all was agreed and settled; etc. One may be led to believe that there is a wealth of material, an enormous number of facts of this kind on which to base the theory of synonymy. But the more we widen the scope of our research, the more obvious it becomes that "true" synonymy is the exception rather than the rule. More often than not, writers bring together in this type of stylistic construction (or this variety of a stylistic device) words, which bear on the same idea (mostly "general" idea) without being what should, properly speaking, be called synonyms. To bring out the nature of this stylistic device, we shall present a number of instances, arranging them in accordance with the number of words used in the stylistic construction in question. 1. Even for pairs the "synonymous" relation is not at all obvious. For example: a faint and feeble voice; he was perfectly generous and f r e e -

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handed; I was desolate and abandoned; dread and f e a r were upon him; she looked very pale and wan; his pale and ghastly face; they were getting coarse and rough; she had coaxed and wheedled before; the visions and d r e a m s of the world; to discuss the m a t t e r frankly and openly; the manner was frank and sincere; he was a shame and d i s grace; he used to cheat and hoodwink poor George; his mutterings were rising up to s c r e a m s and shrieks; he started and trembled; he started and shuddered; his bravery and courage; Oliver felt stunned and stupefied; above respect and esteem; threatening innuendoes and hints; a wicked and cruel boy; the changed and altered aunt; in an u n finished and incomplete state; they are always sudden and unexpected; they were close and intimate friends; he wandered on irresolute and undecided; in rage and fury; their c u r s e s and blasphemy: struggling and wrestling with him; he felt a dread and awe; etc. If we were to try and think of an appropriate t e r m , "semantically allied homogeneous p a r t s as a stylistic construction" or "the m e t a semiotic function of constructions with semantically allied homogeneous p a r t s " would, perhaps, meet the case. The further we go in the number of homogeneous p a r t s , the more obvious becomes the looseness of the semantic relationship between them. 2. Constructions with three homogeneous p a r t s : 7* he coaxed, wheedled and cajoled Jos; the visitors were delighted, cheerful and good-tempered; full of airy flashings, twinkles and coruscations; its shrill, sharp, piercing voice; that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of state; and on it, unwatched, unwept, uncared f o r , was the body of this man; his face is benevolent, kind and tender; his own kind, generous, hearty nature; a bleak, dark, cutting night; it was cold, bleak, biting weather; there was an eager, greedy, r e s t l e s s motion in the eye; the phantom slowly, silently, gravely approached; the air was bracing, c r i s p , and clear; a slouching, moody, drunken sloven; pity my presumption, wickedness, and ignorance; the rain came slowly, thickly, obstinately down; the m a r r i a g e is with a stern, sordid, grinding man; etc. 3. Constructions with four homogeneous parts: the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly; it gave admission to a little, m e a g r e , thoughtful, dingy-faced man; they had c l e a r , loud, lusty, sounding voices; easy, affable, joking, knowing gentleman; charity, m e r c y , forbearance, and benevolence were all my business; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man; he escorted a plump, rosy-cheeked, wholesome, apple-faced young woman; etc. 4. Constructions with five homogeneous p a r t s : he called out in a c o m fortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice; Joe was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish dear fellow; he brought two children - wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable; they were a boy and a girl - yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; running to the window, he opened it: a c l e a r , bright, jovial, s t i r r i n g , cold morning; a malicious, bad-disposed, wordl.y-minded, spiteful, vindictive c r e a t u r e ; etc.

13

5. Constructions with six homogeneous parts: he was a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner; hundreds upon hundreds of men would have been violently slain, smashed, torn, gauged, crushed, mutilated; an old, musty, fusty, narrow-minded, clean and bitter room; a nasty, ungrateful, pigheaded, brutish, obstinate, sneaking dog; you dirty, yellow, sneaking, two-faced, lying, rotten Wop you; etc. 6. Constructions with seven homogeneous parts: she appeals to an enlightened, a high-minded, a right-feeling, a conscientious, a dispassionate, a sympathising, a contemplative jury; there are some who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name. 7. Constructions with eight homogeneous parts: she was the soft, damp, fat, sighing, indigestive, clinging, melancholy, depressingly hopeful kind. 8* These facts show quite clearly that the neat arrangement into the "three levels" which goes back to Lomonosov or, possibly, even much further back is hardly ever fully realized in practice. 9* NOTES 1* See: O. S. Akhmanova, Slovar' Lingvisticeskix Terminov, 2nd ed., "Sovetskaja Enciklopedia", M. , 1969, p. 407. 2* Stylistic synonyms differ in their emotional-expressive-evaluative overtones, while the ideographic ones have different, though allied, meanings. 3* Here and below the examples are borrowed from: I. R. Gal'perin, Ocerki po Stilistike Anglijskogo Jazyka, M . , 1958; I. V. Arnol'd, Leksikologija Sovremennogo Anglijskogo Jazyka, M. , 1959; id: The English Word (Leksikologija Sovremennogo Anglijskogo Jazyka), M . - L . , 1966; M. D. Kuznec i Ju. M. Skrebnev, Stilistika Anglijskogo Jazyka, L . , 1960; E. M. Mednikova, Modern English Lexicology, M . , 1964; R . S . Ginzburg, S.S. Khidekel, G. Y. Knyazeva, A. A. Sankin, A Course in Modern English Lexicology, M. , 1966. 4* By "digest" or "digests" we mean all kinds of brief, shortened, abridged, simplified renderings (or popularizations, or interpretations, or transpositions) of works of literature, which are characterized by a loss of artistic and/or literary value of the original texts and disregard for their aesthetic impact, to be used by those who are satisfied with a smattering of the subject. For a detailed discussion of this term see: A. N. Marcfenko, " "Sociolingvistika" TematiSeskoj Gruppy", Principy i Metody Leksikologii kak Sociolingvisticieskoj Discipliny, ed. by O. S. Akhmanova, MGU, M . , 1971, pp. 64-73; id: "Synonyms in Different Registers", Lexicology: Theory and Method, ed. by Olga Akhmanova, MGU, M. , 1972. 5* Accepted abbreviations: D . V . R . P . - "The Republic of Plato", translated into English by I. H. Davies and D. I. Vaugnan, London,

14 1927; R . R . P . - "The Republic of Plato", A New Version Founded on Basic English by I. A. Richards, N . Y . , 1 9 4 2 ; S . G . T . - Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Oxford, 1940; S. G. L. L. - Jonathan Swift, Gulliver in Lilliput, In Basic English, ed. by I. Litvinoff, M . - L . , 1935; P . G . B . - E . A. Poe, The Gold-Bug, Poems and Tales, Chicago, 1904; P. G.I. - E . A . Poe, The Gold Insect, In Basic English, ed. by I. Litvinoff, M . , 1936; D. R. C. - Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Oxford, 1937; D . R . C . L . - Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, In Basic English, ed. by I. Litvinoff, M. - L. , 1935. 6* The approach is discussed in detail in: A. N. Marcenko, "Ravnoznacnyje Slova v Neidiomaticeskoj Frazeologii", Problemy Neidio maticeskoj Frazeologii, eds. O. S. Akhmanova and E. M. Mednikova, MGU, M . , 1971, pp. 105-116. 7 * Here and throughout this chapter we have tried to correlate the number of instances adduced with the frequency of occurrence in the material under investigation. 8* Judging by this material, it would appear that leading off with "four" we have only adjectives (in contrast to " p a i r s " and "threes" where all the main parts of speech are represented); this appears to be borne out by "with five", but in " s i x " and "seven", to our surprise, we find six and seven nouns. 9* We have covered the following works of fiction: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, M . , 1961; Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, London, 1905; Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poetry and P r o s e , M. , 1959; Charles Dickens, M a r tin Chuzzlewit, vol. 2, M . , 1951; id: The Adventures of Oliver Twist, M . , 1955; id: Hard Times, M . , 1952; W. M. Thackeray, The History of Pendennis, vol. 1, M . , 1963; id: The History of Henry Esmond, E s q . , M . , 1954; id: Vanity F a i r , part 2, M. , 1950; Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, M. , 1956; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, M. , 1952; George Eliot, The Mill on the F l o s s , M. , 1958; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, M. , 1959; J a c k London, Martin Eden, M. , 1960; E. L. Voynich, The Gadfly, M. , 1953; A. J . Cronin, The Citadel, M. , 1957; Richard Aldington, Death of a Hero, M . , 1958; J a c k Lindsay, Betrayed Spring, M. , 1955; F . T. Palgrave, The Golden Treasury, N. Y. , 1945; Charles Dickens, Christmas Stories, English Library, vol. X V I I I . , Berlin, 1923; Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, New York, 1961; Jawaharlar Nehru, The Discovery of India, London 1956; Thomas Carlyle, Thoughts on Life, London, 1895.

3

THE STYLISTIC FUNCTIONING OF LINGUISTIC UNITS

It follows from what has been said above that linguistic units may function stylistically because they possess certain expressive-evaluativeemotional overtones which are superimposed on their main semiotic content. These overtones accompany the main semantic core of a linguistic unit, the meaning proper. Linguistic style is that part of language which is used to impart to the message certain expressiveevaluative-emotional features. Consequently linguostylistics concerns itself with the nature (peculiarities) of the expressive-evaluativeemotional features of linguistic units. Linguostylistics cuts right across all the basic linguistic disciplines, i . e . phonology, morphology, lexicology and syntax. Thus, for instance, if we compare the sentences: "He spoke the truth" and "He spake the truth", then from the point of view of morphology (as part of grammar), the two forms are merely coexistent variants of the past tense, non= continuous aspect, active voice and indicative mood. From the linguostylistic point of view, however, these two forms (being as they are essentially the same, i . e . carrying the same semantic content) must be viewed as two different modes of expression, because they carry different stylistic overtones. Thus, "spake" is archaic and therefore either used in elevated style (or sometimes facetiously employed in ordinary speech), while "spoke" is the ordinary way of expressing the lexical and grammatical meanings which have been specified above. As far as examples from the domain of lexicology are concerned, they can be found by the hundreds in all books on style. Particularly well-known are the contrastive verbs and adjectives, typical pairs with the word of Anglo-Saxon origin carrying a neutral and the Romance one carrying a more formal, bookish or elevated stylistic overtone. 1* Thus, for instance: begin - commence; go up - ascend; think cogitate; motherly - maternal; brotherly - fraternal; heavenly - celestial; earthy, earthly, earthen - terrestrial; timely - temporal, etc. 2*

For purposes of pedagogy it is always helpful to turn to the more obvious cases, i . e . cases in which the overtones are immediately apparent to the naked eye. A case in point is the following extract from George Mike?' "How to Be an Alien": " . . Some years ago I spent a lot of time with a young lady who was very proud and conscious of being English. Once she asked me to my great surprise - whether I would marry her. "No", I replied, " I will not. My mother would never agree to my marrying a foreigner". She looked at me a little surprised and irritated, and

16

retorted: "I, a foreigner? What a silly thing to say. I am English. You are the foreigner. And your mother, too". I did not give in. "In Budapest, too?" I asked her. "Everywhere". she declared with determination. "Truth does not depend on Geography. What is true in England is also true in Hungary and in North Borneo and Venezuela and everywhere." ".. .You foreigners are so clever", said a lady to me some years ago. First . . . I considered the remark complimentary. Since then I have learnt that it was far from it. These few words expressed the lady's contempt and slight disgust for f o r e i g n e r s . . . A modern Englishman, however, uses the word clever in the sense: shrewd, sly, furtive, surreptitious, treacherous, sneaking, crafty, unEnglish, un-Scottish, un-Welsh. . . " " . . . The verb to naturalize clearly proves what the British think of you. Before you are admitted to British citizenship you are not even considered a natural human being... "natural" means: of, or according to, or provided by nature, physically existing, innate... If you are tired of not being provided by nature, not being physically existing... apply for British citizenship. " The key-words in these passages are "foreign", "foreigner", "clever", "natural" and "naturalize". The particular kind of literary style is achieved here because the meanings and stylistic overtones of these words are whimsically opposed, made to clash in these particular utterances. These words are very clear examples of a case when semantics proper is so laden with stylistic overtones as to be practically overpowered by the latter. If all these words "meant" just what dictionaries say they do, the story would not be funny or humorous. As far as syntax is concerned the stylistic approach may be explained by comparing the following different ways of "saying the same thing". If, for instance, in the opening lines of H. W. Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha": "Should you ask me whence these stories, Whence these legends and traditions, . . . " we were to change the order in the following manner: "If you should a s k . . . " , or "Should you feel like a s k i n g . . . " , "If you found yourself inclined to a s k . . . " , e t c . , we would immediately see the indubitable change in the style of the utterance. Roman Jakobson's principle of expanded reiteration from the linguostylistic point of view must be classified as belonging to syntax. At the same time it is far beyond all linguistic preoccupations and categories. We must therefore regard it as a borderline phenomenon, something that lies between linguo- and literary stylistics. The example from Roman Jakobson's well-known article 3* may be adduced to illustrate the point: in the case of Mark Anthony's speech the expanded reiteration of a certain syntactic construction produces a striking stylistic effect. 4* It thus becomes the main device of the "gram-

17 mar of poetry": never to repeat the line exactly as it was said before, but infallibly introduce certain modifications into the reiteration: . . . The noble Brutus 79 Hath told you Caesar was ambitious;... 80 For Brutus is an honourable m a n , . . . 84 But Brutus says he was ambitious,... 88 And Brutus is an honourable m a n . . . . 89 95 Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;... And Brutus is an honourable m a n . . . 96 Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;... 100 And, sure, he is an honourable m a n . . . 101 (Julius Caesar, III., i i . , 79-101) The variety of combinations and modes of expressing the same "thingmeant" is almost infinite. In spite of the protean nature of "give and take" between language and speech, students of linguostylistics find it, nevertheless, possible to distinguish between (1) inherent linguostylistic phenomena on the one hand and (2) adherent linguostylistic phenomena, on the other. The inherent linguostylistic phenomena are those that "cling" to a linguistic unit: they form a permanent part of the stylistic characteristics of a linguistic unit. The adherent phenomena are c r e ated by "evocation". The speaker or the writer is thus assumed to be able not only to use the "permanent" stylistic devices, but also to c r e ate, to "evoke" new ones by combining linguistic units in certain unspecified ways. Thus, for example, "pelf", "money", "dough" denote the same "thing": on the semantic level they all correspond to the Russian "den'gi". But while their "denotation" or "reference" is the same, what they "connote", their "connotation", 5* is different. When we say "money", the connotation is neutral. When we say "pelf", we connote "importance", "seriousness", we are not indifferent; the allusion is not merely casual, we are quite prepared to expend quite a bit of emotion on what we are saying. If in contrast to "pelf' we use the word "dough", there is contempt, derision too, but the emotional colouring is of a different kind. In all these three cases the connotation is inherent. On hearing these words a person who knows English will immediately apprehend not only the denotation (reference) of the three units ( i . e . not only the fact that the speaker is thinking of this particular object - den'gi, pecunia, moneta), but their inherent connotations as well, for they "cling" to these words, are inseparable from them. It is very easy to think of a suitable context for these words, because the connotations are an established linguistic fact. In contrast to inherent connotation, connotation through evocation, or adherent connotation, creates a variety of new problems, for a discussion of which it is habitual to turn to fiction, or "literature" in the ordinary sense of the word (i.e. belles-lettres). Indeed, in the case of a well-known writer so much literary-critical knowledge is usually available that linguostylistic conclusions are easily reached. It has been suggested, however, that adherent connotation is by no means confined to the works of recognized masters of style and that it can

18

and should be discovered and studied in the most trivial occurrences of everyday speech. Thus, for instance, if we were to compare the following two pairs of sentences and word-combinations: "He will a r rive to-morrow". "He arrives to-morrow"; "A clear fountain". "A fountain clear", the different connotations can easily be shown to be adherent (and not inherent in the units employed). 6* If it is assumed that language provides the speaker with mere words (which are then regarded as the only units of language) and not with word-combinations, then it is the individual speaker who has evoked the connotations in the above examples. But if it is believed (in the present writers' opinion quite reasonably) that language (the system, la langue) includes c e r tain patterns of word-combination as well, with their own inherent linguostylistic connotations, then the linguostylistic difference between "a clear crystal" and "a crystal clear" is not evoked, but merely " r e produced". In other words, the stylistic connotations of a word-combination (or a pattern, as the case may be) can then be as stable and fixed as the stylistic connotations of separate words. What has been said above could now be illustrated in the following manner. Take, for instance, an extract from Wordsworth: It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration;... (Sonnet XXX, 1-3) If we begin by scanning the actual lexical material of which the extract is composed, it will be natural to conclude that there is, in the whole passage, only one word with an obvious inherent, non-neutral stylistic connotation, i . e . "beauteous". The inherent connotation of "beauteous" shows it to be a poetic word. But if the extract is poetry, it should be "poetic" throughout. If, however, the rest of the words are scrutinized, it will be easy to see that there is absolutely nothing in them to prevent their being used in "ordinary" or everyday speech. Exception could be taken to the words "nun", "holy", "adoration". But if these three words are different from the rest, it is not the way "beauteous" is different from "beautiful". They are different merely because they denote objects and actions pertaining to a specific sphere of human life. These objects and actions themselves are connected with something lofty, elevated. If from assessing the relationship between objects we turn to the relation between words, we shall then be able to state that the relation between words like "evening", "free", etc., and "holy", "nun", "adoration" is quite different from the relation of the former and a word like "beauteous". The elevated quality of the words "nun", "holy", "adoration" lies in the things themselves, while the elevated connotation of the word "beauteous" (its meaning or denotation is identical with "beautiful") is inherent, it has nothing to do with the object it denotes. It cannot be used in everyday speech to denote pleasant looking things because, by connotation, it is confined to the more solemn forms of linguistic expression. The words "nun", "holy" and "adoration" - however lofty their referents - are the only means of referring to the objects in question, irrespective of their

19 stylistic character or the context of situation. Some more examples of inherent connotation: " . . . Imagine, for instance, that the porter of the block of flats you live in remarks sharply that you must not put yout dustbin out in front of your door before 7. 30 AM. Should you answer: "Please, don't bully me", a loud and tiresome argument may follow... Should you answer, however, with these words: "I repudiate your petulant expostulations", the argument will be closed at once, the porter will be proud of having such a highly cultured man in the b l o c k . . . " " . . . But even in Curzon Street society, if you say, for instance, that you are a tough guy, they will consider you a vulgar person. Should you declare, however, that you are an inquisitorial and peremptory homo sapiens, they will have no idea what you mean, but they will feel in their bones that you must be something wonderful..." 7* In the above extracts the four underscored sentences can easily be singled out for the purpose of further exemplifying inherent connotation. They are clearly stylistic variations of the same underlying purport. Their comparative stylistic analysis presents no difficulty whatsoever, for if this were not the case, George Mikes would not be the popular humorist he is. NOTES 1* "Neutral" - "nejtral'nyj" - means "not connected with specific situations or spheres of linguistic activity". The "neutral style" serves as the unmarked member of stylistic oppositions. The contrasting or marked member is represented by different kinds of stylistic expressiveness. These stand out against the "neutral" background and are apprehended as "marked or "positive" because of the above mentioned opposition. The absence of "positive" emotional - expressive - evaluative overtones or characteristics in linguistic units (or patterns) does not mean that they have no stylistic colouring at all. In cases of this kind their stylistic colouring is neutral. The absence of "positive" stylistic overtones (colouring) should be regarded as "meaningful absence" (cf. the concept of "zero" morpheme in grammar). Thus stylistically neutral units (and patterns) of language, when devoid of any emotional - expressive - evaluative colouring, serve as a necessary background to bring out more clearly those that are stylistically marked. 2* These examples are borrowed from Otto Jespersen, Growth and Structure of the English Language, Oxford, 1958, pp. 121-123. 3* Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics", in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language, Mass., 1960, p. 375. 4* It can be seen from Part II of the present book that syntactic linguostylistics in the proper sense of the word is here interpreted in prosodic terms. 5* More on connotation see below, pp. 29-30. 6* So far we have given examples of inherent connotation in contrast to

20

adherent connotation, only for the words, for the separate individual lexical units. The question to be asked now is whether adherent connotation is ever confined to the separate words the way the inherent connotation is. In other words, the question is whether there should be any difference of approach between the linguostylistic analysis of words vs. word-combinations. 7* George Mike?, How to Be an Alien.

4 THE STRUCTURE OF INHERENT CONNOTATION

From what has been said above and the examples we have seen in the preceding pages, the difference between cases like "beauteous beautiful" on the one hand, and cases like "nun", "holy", "adoration" on the other, must have been made sufficiently clear. In the case of "nun", "holy" and "adoration" the words are, in a sense, unique: there is no corresponding neutral word for "nun" or "holy", or for "adoration". The reason why we claim that certain inherent stylistic connotations of an elevated nature are attached to these words is because they denote objects which are thought to be elevated in themselves. Tliese words acquire these connotations through their association with a certain specific kind of object which is not trivial or common. On the other hand, when we compare "beautiful" and "beauteous", it becomes clear that "beautiful" may be regarded as neutral, while "beauteous" is obviously elevated. We have contrasted inherent and adherent connotation and, strictly speaking, we could have stopped here in so far as a course of linguostylistics is concerned. But obviously this would not be the right thing for us to do, because there is one more aspect of this problem which should be taken care of: we are thinking of what might be described as the structure of inherent connotation. For the purpose of more profound research in the field we must go more deeply into the nature of this extremely interesting, subtle, and at times, almost intangible phenomenon. To arrive at sufficiently well-grounded conclusions, we decided to go over the complete stock of English adjectives (the word "complete" is used here to mean not actually aU the adjectives listed in, for instance, the New English Dictionary, but all the connotative adjectives - the adjectives with inherent connotations - which can be found in a one-volume dictionary of the type of the Advanced Learner's Dictionary by A. S. Hornby). We found that this extensive material (the total number of adjectives is about 1700) displays more or less clearly 1* the following categories. First of all, there are adjectives whose inherent connotation is firmly rooted in some extralinguistic object, denoted by the underlying morpheme or root element. Thus, for instance, if we have an adjective like "acid" - an acid smile - the nature of its connotation becomes obvious as it makes us think of the substance with a sharp, sour, unpleasant taste. In the same way adjectives like "caustic", "poignant", "pungent" and some others owe their connotations to the different effects produced on our gustatory and olfactory nerves. Their number is not very great: we could even say that it is, com-

22

paratively speaking, small; but in spite of the fact that they a r e not numerous, they stand out very clearly as down-to-earth, as firmly tied down, as it were, to a concrete object of extralinguistic reality. The way some more abstract meaning is derived f r o m such down-toearth objects in c a s e s of thi^ kind is f u r t h e r illustrated by the f o l lowing examples: arid, base, b i t t e r , bleak, blunt, bright, b r i s k , c a l lous, clean, c l e a r , cold, crude, dark, dense, drab, faint, feeble, f i r m , flabby, flimsy, f r e s h , h a r s h , hollow, insipid, light, limpid, livid, lofty, morbid, narrow, obscure, obtuse, pure, queasy, ripe, rough, shallow, sour, stagnant, t a r t , tough, vague, vapid, verdant, w a r m , etc. This variant of inherent connotation i s , as it were, at one extreme. At the other extreme is the inherent connotation which depends on motivation, on the word possessing a distinct semantic s t r u c t u r e , thus being expressed not denotationally or referentially, but linguistically. If, f o r instance, we take words like "abnormal" or "accursed", "annoying" or "amusing" or "advantageous", their semantic structure leaves us in no doubt as to their connotation: "abnormal - different f r o m what is normal", "accursed - under a c u r s e " , "annoying or amusing - that which annoys or a m u s e s " , "advantageous - that which brings or gives an advantage", etc. The number of examples of this kind is very great: artful, a r t l e s s , artistic, becoming, bewitching, bothersome, c a r e f u l , c a r e l e s s , comfortable, dangerous, deceitful, delightful, effective, enjoyable, experienced, faithful, faithless, fashionable, gifted, glorious, graceful, h a r m l e s s , hateful, i m m a t e r i a l , immoderate, immodest, joyful, joyless, knowledgeable, knowing, kindly, lively, loving, lucky, natural, neglectful, noiseless, obliging, oppressive, orderly, painful, painless, perilous, r e a s o n able, rebellious, regretful, satisfying, shameful, shameless, talented, tasteful, tasteless, (unabashed, unaffected, unapproachable), 2* vicious, victorious, vigorous, wasteful, watchful, winning, youthful, etc. These a r e the two extreme c a s e s . This does not, however, mean to say that they a r e neatly separated f r o m each other by hard and fast divisions. Not infrequently the two basic features or c h a r a c t e r istics overlap, the connotations being conditioned both referentially and structurally. Due to the specific character of linguistic categorization, one cannot expect different categories to manifest themselves one by one, in the form of simple c l e a r - c u t oppositions. Thus in words like "ashy" or "ashen" the clearly observable referential connotation - "of or like ashes" - is complemented by the structural organization of the word. The same applies to the following examples: acidulous, airy, a i r l e s s , cadeverous, cagey, crusty, deathly, draggled, d r e s s y , glacial, glassy, g r e a s y , manly, muddy, oily, poisonous, ragged, ravenous, rotten, soapy, sodden, stony, venomous, willowy, wintry, etc. If we now pass f r o m the completely clear case of obvious motivation, i . e . linguistic motivation in t e r m s of word-formation, we shall find ourselves moving gradually towards the least conspicuous case along this line of categorization: the words which contain what has been m o r e or less successfully described as phonesthemes.

23

We should like to s t r e s s the point that although the nature of phonesthemes has never been very deeply investigated, it is of the utmost significance f o r a linguostylistician who concerns himself with inherent stylistic connotation. A phonestheme is a r e c u r r e n t c o m bination of sounds which is s i m i l a r to the morpheme in the sense that a certain content or meaning is m o r e or less clearly associated with it. The difference between a phonestheme and a morpheme is the total absence of what is usually described as morphologization (morfologizacija) of the remaining p a r t of the slovoform. Thus, f o r instance, English " s p l - " in "splash", "splurge", "splutter", e t c . , " f l - " in "fly", "flow", "flee", etc. The reason why " s p l - " or " f l - " a r e not simply classified as morphemes is that when they a r e separated f r o m the r e s t of the word, we a r e left with bits of what may be described as "morphologically u s e l e s s m a t e r i a l " , i . e . the remaining portions " - a s h " , " - y " , e t c . , a r e completely unidentifiable as in any way connected with morphology or morphonology. Nevertheless, when we are studying inherent connotation, trying to understand its s t r u c t u r e in a language like English, we have to take the possibility of phonesthemic expression into consideration, because, although the sound-complex in question does not lend itself to the hard and fast rules of d e s c r i p tive morphology, although phonesthemes a r e not analysable morphonologically in the ordinary sense of the word, f r o m the point of view of linguostylistics they a r e invaluable, f o r they help u s to understand much m o r e deeply the different verbal reactions to a situation. For instance, the same element " f l - " in words like "flight", "flimsy", "flippant" unmistakably conveys the idea of lightness, a i r i n e s s , even grace with the implication of instability, frailty, insecurity, with which lack of weight is not infrequently associated. If we take such words as "slack", sloppy", "sluggish", the connotation of slowness, inactivity, which they all s h a r e , could be to a considerable extent a c counted f o r by the presence in their structure of the element " s i - " , the quality of the following vowel being also of no small significance (cf. slick, slippery - unpleasantly smooth, too smooth and t h e r e f o r e t r e a c h erous). With the phonesthemes " s p r - " in " s p r y " , "sprightly", "springy" is associated the idea of energetic, b r i s k , lively motion. 3* In this way we gradually come to those adjectives which do p o s s e s s some inherent connotation, but which have nothing at all in their s t r u c ture to account f o r it. This is the category of words which will have to be studied very attentively, and probably it is here that the theory of lexical phonetics will be especially helpful. There is nothing in language that does not find expression: whatever we may be talking about is completely u s e l e s s unless we can put our finger on those linguistic means which are used when something is actually passed on to the listener. A very interesting field of inquiry is in how f a r , with a total absence of either denotational connection or "motivated" inner f o r m , with no semantic structure to speak of in t e r m s of lexical morphology, e t c . , we can depend on the specific prosodic characteristics whose lexical function is investigated by lexical phonetics. What has just been e x pounded can be exemplified as follows:

24

= v Why, he is a ¡Common^labouring [boy. = lento The adjective "common" is not motivated in any particular way. But it does not require a very close examination to see that the utterance adduced above displays certain prosodic characteristics of considerable importance. F i r s t , over a long stretch of utterance one can observe a decrease in speed within the word "common". Secondly, loudness varies from normal to forte and, thirdly, one ought to mention the peculiar pronunciation of the first syllable of the word under investigation: it is what may be described as a held syllable. Held syllables occur "when one makes ready to articulate a syllable but delays the release of its initial segment". The delay produces a "bottling up" of the air for the articulation, which results in an anticipatory silence, perhaps also some audible vocal cord vibration, and greater emphasis on what follows." 4* Vexy much the same prosodic organisation can be observed in the following example: = This is a ghastly beginning indeed. = lento The evidence of these examples suggests that words like abject, absurd, common, cruel, delicious, dismal, ghastly, grisly, mean, poor, sordid, squalid, vile, vulgar, e t c . , are pronounced differently from less connotative words. It would, however, be a great mistake to believe that the words whose inherent connotation is expressed morphologically or referentially are, in principle, devoid of variations in loudness, diapason, tempo, etc. In cases of this kind the prosodic organisation is subservient to either referentially or linguistically motivated inherent connotation. The last point is worth exemplifying. 1. = Oh,\Jane, - this is^bitter. - This isSvicked. = = It would be Iwicked to ot>ey you. = 2. = What he wanted was to be am used - to get through the twenty four hours pleasantly - without sitting down to dry business = lento 3. = 1\Amazing girl, /Thomas, 1 but where are you going to find a lento ^husband for her ? = 4. = He was a (statesman of irfcoMPARABLE ability, Your ¡Grace. = The examples under consideration show highly varied patterns of pitch-movement (1, 2, 3), changes in the systems of loudness (4), tempo (2, 3) and pitch-range (2). Changes in the prosodic arrangement of the utterances no doubt vary in keeping with the inherent connotation of the words in question. It is worth noting that even in the second example (which differs from all the others as regards their prosodic organisation, for it is a piece of narration and not a dialogue) the speaker was bound by the constraints common to the use of words of this kind.

25

We may, therefore, conclude by saying that inherent connotation may be structured by strictly prosodie means, this phenomenon being the most general or universal, covering all evaluative adjectives, irrespective of their morphological structure or derivational connections. It may also be augmented by the simultaneous manifestation or realization of other differential means, as when the prosodie characteristics are combined with peculiarities of inner form or semantic structure. NOTES 1* We say "more of less" because in linguistics it is usually a question of "more or less" and not a straightforward "yes or no" opposition. 2* In connection with the "un-" adjectives a slight digression is called for. Although, generally speaking, they may and have been described as caritive in meaning, at a closer examination they prove to be far from uniform: "negation" , expressed by the prefix " u n - " can apply both to " g o o d " and " b a d " things. Thus " p l e a s a n t " is ameliorative adjective; with " u n - " added to it, this adjective becomes caritive or pejorative - "unpleasant". The same would apply to "true - untrue", "happy - unhappy", "fair - unfair", "satisfactory - unsatisfactory", " suitable - unsuitable", e t c . , with which not only a trained anglist, but every student of the language is perfectly familiar. The very interesting observation which we succeeded in making as a result of the overall analysis of the adjectives with the caritive prefix "un-" was that there is a fair number of adjectives in English in which the same prefix " u n - " serves to negate some unpleasant idea, e . g . : unaccused, unaffected, unalarmed, unagressive, unambiguous, unartificial, unburdened, uncomplicated, uncontroversial, undismayed, undistressed, undisturbed, unerring, unexhausted, unfeigned, etc. 3* Setting so much store by the "fl-", "si-" type of phonestheme, we should not ignore other phonesthemes of a more abstract kind like "-ive" in "active", "defective", "effective", "sportive", etc.; "-ate" in "accurate", "moderate", "obdurate", etc., or "-ual" in "effectual", " s e n s u a l " , etc., and some others which undoubtedly deserve more attention than has been given them so f a r . 4* David Crystal and Derek Davy "Investigating English Style", 1970, p. 34.

PART II STYLE A S " S P E E C H "

I

THE ESSENTIAL CATEGORIES OF THE SPEECH EVENT

In part I the two main aspects of the complex phenomenon under investigation were discussed (the categories of inherent in contrast to adherent connotation). A fuller picture of the main categories and taxonomies of speech will now be attempted. For language to be used in communication a large number of different underlying factors must be taken into account, the most important of these being the "referent". That was why "naming" was included as a separate taxon. 1* The term "naming" came into being because onomasiology was contrasted with semasiology to keep clearly apart the factors of signification and denotation. It was assumed that the object or referent as part of extralinguistic reality is correlated with linguistic elements each of which contains (or is characterized by) a certain signification, and through this signification, has the power of denotation, i . e . can be used to refer to a certain object. It was also assumed that the process of referring a certain signification or a thing-meant is something that can be separated from the rest of the factors or aspects of the act of speaking. "Naming" was then suggested for this purpose. 2* When we look more closely, however, at the different refinements which have been introduced by the research work carried out in the English Department of the Moscow State University, we begin to doubt whether the taxonomy should be so detailed. We might as well begin by stating that every linguistic unit has a certain meaning or signification on which its capacity to be used for denotation or reference depends. The subtle relationship which arises between signification and denotation (or reference) creates connotation: the latter may be inherent or adherent (see above, pp. 16-18). Denotation presupposes the existence of something outside the speech event. But extralinguistic reality is by no means confined to the more or less material object or "referent". However complex the concept of the thing-meant or the different things-meant may be, it is not something that will require a great amount of research. Some of the thingsmeant are concrete, co-ordinated clearly and properly in time and space; others do not lend themselves to definition and cannot be touched or seen or tasted, etc. The basic taxons, then, are the following: (1) object (referent or thing-meant), (2) sense (signification), (3) denotation, (4) connotation. These categories or aspects must be clearly distinguished. The three categories - sense (signification), denotation, and connotation are parts of what is usually described as "linguistic meaning". They may be explained as follows: sense (signification) is an inherent

30

property of a word or a word-combination (or word-equivalent) which enables every speaker of the language to use the word in a particular way to denote "objects" or "things-meant", because lexical units have the power of "individual reference". It is different from denotation, for there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between the signification of a word and the way it is used in different situations and with different intentions on the part of the speaker. In certain situations the denotation may be flagrantly out of keeping with the signification. 3* It should also be borne in mind that using words, in general, depends on knowing the language, on the "linguistic competence" of the speaker. This is further complicated by the fact that not all speakers are endowed with what may be called "vernacular knowledge" and have to content themselves with different degrees of "foreign-language knowledge". In the former case it is a question of education: a native speaker acquires proficiency in his native tongue by extensive reading and thus widens his range of discourse. Without this even a fairly advanced user of a vernacular will "violate" some of the more particular rules of his native lexical semantics. Thus, for instance, the use of Russian "postrics'a" for "having a hair-cut" would be severely censured only a generation ago: this form was strictly confined to the meaning of "taking the monastic vows" . Or, for example, the too frequently occurring "odet' platje" instead of "nadet' platje" a ridiculous distortion really meaning "to dress a dress". But signification is not unchangeable and what was a mistake yesterday may be accepted as correct usage today. Thus "violations" when they become "usual" (uzualnyje) are no longer a "misuse", but one more legitimate meaning of a polysemantic word or expression. Whatever the type of knowledge, however, familiarity with the sense (signification) of a word is an obvious prerequisite to its proper functioning in the speech of the individual. Categories 3 and 4 in the list above are of especial importance to linguostylistics. Denotation is the use (employment) of a word which, by definition, is endowed with a certain sense (signification or individual reference) of its own to denote (or name for the nonce) a c e r tain "object" (in the broadest sense of the word). Denotation then is opposed to connotation, thus: denotation vs. connotation. When a word is used to "name" an object it does not merely "denote" it. It invariably "connotes" something at the same time, for it creates or conveys certain expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones even when it is a "neutral" word whose overtones are "zero" ones. 5* Thus, for example, the word "beauteous" when used to "name" a quality, does not "denote" it merely: it also "connotes" the overtones of solemnity, poetical character, etc. NOTES A taxon is a separate linguistic fact or a particular realization of a taxonomic category. It is a concrete realization of linguistic "markers", forming the basis of taxonomic contrasts.

31 2* See: Rolandas F. Idzelis et a l . , The Principles and Methods of Linguostylistics, ed. by Olga Akhmanova, MGU, M., 1970, p. 18. 3* In cases of this kind we speak of "enantiosemy" or "polarisation of meaning". Thus, for example, "A pretty story indeed!" is far from being in any way "pleasant"; what happened was downright annoying or objectionable. 4* When we speak of "foreign-language" knowledge of the vocabulary we mean the specific "world view" of a given language. It is connected, therefore, with what is now termed "folk taxonomies", i . e . the r e flection in a given language of the semantic categorizations historically developed by a given speech community. For a detailed discussion of the problem see Part IV below. Cf. O. S. Akhmanova, Ogerki po Obsfcej i Russkoj Leksikologii, "Ucpedgiz", M. , 1957, pp. 43-53. 5* Cf. above, p. 15.

2

THE METASEMIOTICS OF SPEECH

We shall begin this chapter by stating that the language-speech dichotomy, i . e . that the division into language and speech, although very much has been written on the subject, still deserves attention, e s pecially within the present context. True, for a course in linguostylistics we do not have to deal with the m o r e general questions: on the one hand we assume that there exists a thing called " l a n g u a g e " (jazyk), which is one of the natural, organic (samobytnyx) semiological systems. It is the basic and most important means of communication between the m e m b e r s of a given speech community f o r whom this system is not only a means of c o m munication, but also a means of developing their thinking, of passing on their cultural and historical traditions f r o m generation to g e n e r ation. This we assume to be the c a s e , and we have no doubt that English, Russian, e t c . , are instances of semiological systems of this kind. At the same time what we a r e actually dealing with is a peculiar kind of activity, the activity of a speaker or a w r i t e r who is using language (the system described above) for purposes of interaction with other m e m b e r s of the same speech community (or other speech communities in the c a s e of b i - and poly-lingual communication). In actual fact we are confronted with a host of different means which the language presents or with which it endows the speaker f o r p u r poses of passing on different "purports" which include besides i n f o r mation proper, different appellative, hortative, etc. " p u r p o r t s " , including a number of ways of affecting the listener or r e a d e r one way or another, and in a sense, affecting oneself with what one is saying. All these different kinds of activity can be, roughly speaking, covered by the word "speech". For us it is extremely important to understand that what we actually observe and the source f r o m which we draw our material (on the basis of which we come to certain conclusions) is of course the product of this activity, i . e . the i n n u m e r able " proizvedenija r e C l " . Whenever we say something we are producing, creating a certain piece of speech; from this point of view everything f r o m a sentence like "How a r e you ?" to "War and P e a c e " b e long to the same category. We "produced" or "generated" the short trite sentence under certain circumstances for certain purposes, and so did L. N. Tolstoj in the case of his monumental work. Nothing in speech is ever purposeless, there is always a certain aim to be achieved when people speak or write. This should be accepted as a starting point if we adhere to what has been said above. If this is the c a s e , it stands to reason that it is somehow m o r e

33 natural to speak not of the functions of language, not of the functions of the system, but of the different functions of speech. As far as the system is concerned, its only function is to be or serve as a means: roughly speaking, language as an underlying system (a semiotic system) functions because it is a means, and when we talk about the different functions, when we want to analyse them and to say that this one is emotive, the other conative, another still metalinguistic, e t c . , then it is certainly the different functions of speech that we have in mind. It follows that the speaker (or writer) has at his disposal a certain semiotic system; the semiotic system - the language - functions in speech, while speech is used for different purposes, the functions of speech being multiform. 1 * The function of speech of especial importance for linguostylistics is what Roman Jakobson called the "poetic" function. We describe it as the "metasemiotic" function 2* to distinguish it from the "semantic" one. In the latter case, the function consists in passing on information and is based on the principle that each unit of expression is indissolubly connected with a corresponding unit of content. On the metasemiotic level the functioning of speech is completely different. It includes a large number of problems of fiction, of the process of creation in literature, literature as an art, as the specific kind of reverberation of reality which takes the form of images, etc. This complex relationship was explained by leading Soviet linguists. Thus according to G. O. Vinokur, 3* the question of the metasemiotic function of speech is of particular importance when we think of the specific character of fiction (belles-lettres), and in general, the a r tistic creation as based on verbal art. To understand the essence of this particular kind of creative activity, to know on what the aesthetic verbal creativity which uses speech as its material depends, is probably the most important problem of linguostylistics. Although we could follow Jakobson a certain part of the way and concentrate on expressions like "Joan and Margery", "Harvard Yard in April", e t c . , 4* we would not have anything like a complete picture; these examples may come in useful if we want to give as broad a picture of the metasemiotic function of speech as we possibly can. We may use them when we want to include all kinds of comparatively speaking unimportant instances of something that belongs to metasemiotics - but, of course, always with a grain of salt, as it were. What we really have to deal with, what we are actually dealing with all the time, or what philology is in general concerned with, is literature in the proper sense of the word. That, then, is where we concentrate on the actual principles and methods of research. As far as the latter are concerned, we feel pretty certain that there are at least three distinct stages which must be heuristically kept apart. As we shall try to show later on, there is something intrinsically wrong with the so-called "modernist" literature. "Modernist" literature is not "literature" in the full sense of the word, because it begins higher-up: it does not begin at the beginning, as it were, it skips one of the most important levels, i . e . the semantic one. We shall follow the tradition of Soviet linguistics (we should never tire of repeating that it is in this country that all these

34

questions were worked out in greatest detail), and insist that a work of verbal art (if we adopt this form of expression) can be properly analysed only if no less than three planes or levels are kept clearly apart. Let us begin by quoting the Russian examples 5* which we think are very helpful. The first example is the following: "Na rodinu t'anetsa tuca Stop tol'ko poplakat' nad nej. " Let us follow G. O. Vinokur in his analysis of this poem. According to him, every single word within it is "metaphoric" - with "metaphoric" used to include not only what we would describe as merely metaphoric, but as metametaphoric as well. In other words, there can be no doubt whatsoever that we cannot fully appreciate the poem, unless we clearly understand the words: we must understand the words - " t u C a " , "plakat' " , etc., as such to begin with, we must have a very clear idea of what they mean (semantically). Unless we understand them on the semantic level, we cannot understand their "metaphoric" significance. On the metasemiotic level, then, the "rain", although it does not cease to be what it naturally is to every speaker of Russian, (dosft') the idea of rain as "condensed moisture of the atmosphere falling in separate drops; fall of such drops" is there. But everybody can see that nothing can be derived from this poem, unless the reader understands that all the words in this distich are used metaphorically by the poet. What he is really talking about is not "rain", but tears which he sees with his creative artistic mind's eye: he imagines something which, because of this particular artistic device, he succeeds in conveying to his readers. But the most important thing if we want to speak of literature as a form of social consciousness (forma obscestvennogo soznanija) is that a given piece of expression can not serve its purpose, unless the reader simultaneously visualizes something that finds expression not on the metaphoric or metasemiotic but on the metametasemiotic level. The moment we want to understand a work of literature or, more specifically, a poem, we must make it absolutely clear that we are capable of rising to the metametasemiotic level and understanding that it is not merely tears which somebody is shedding in this metaphoric way, but complex emotions of a certain person or persons who are separated from their homeland, whose homeland is in a very desperate state of oppression, etc., that a person (or persons) long to see their mother country again in order that they may shed their tears over it. Another example: in his analysis of Sergei Esenin and Alexander Block, V. V. Vinogradov is even more explicit on the subject. If we examine the following extract from Sergei Esenin: "V zalixvatskom stepnom razgone Kolokol'cik xoxocet do sl'oz Potomu sto nad vsem, sto bylo Kolokol'cik xoxocet do sl'oz",

35 where the metaphoric image of a bell on a horse's neck is said to be "laughing" (we do not ordinarily speak of a "bell laughing") we have no doubt that this is a metaphor. But in the beginning the metaphor is merely an imaginative description of very quick driving across the steppe, while at the end of the poem it is the cruel, ironic laughter of Fate, it is Fate laughing at a wasted life. To repeat: when the poem is taken as a whole, we must first understand it on the semantic level, i . e . understand what the words "kolokol'fiik", "step'", etc., mean as such. Unless we know Russian in the simplest sense of the word, unless we understand the meanings of all the words on the semantic level, we cannot possibly enjoy or fully appreciate the meta- and metametaconnotations which are evoked by them. Only if the basic understanding of what words really mean has been firmly established can one appreciate their literary value. It follows that confining ourselves to the first two steps or levels would be worthless, would end in fruitless formalism, if we were unable to pass on to the third level - the metametasemiotic one, where we would be expected to understand what Sergei Esenin was really trying to say: the idea of desperate driving across the steppe which was so typical of trends in the philosophy and literature of that time and which underlies the particular metametasemiotic effect: we can see how having reached the metasemiotic level and having transformed the bell into something that is alive, something that is spiteful and vindictive we allow it to behave most objectionably and make fun of wasted lives, of hopeless situations which, incidentally, was typical of certain trends in the literature of that time. The same, of course, applies to another very well-chosen example from Alexander Blok's "Na zeleznoj doroge". 6* These three levels constitute the general stylistic layout, the system of expression which we describe as the "poetic" or "metasemiotic" function of speech. This is what speech can do by way of creative effort, the effort of the writer or the poet, the person who uses words as material for his aesthetic images. So much then for the principles and the Russian examples to show how these principles can be applied. We have tried to be as explicit on the subject as we could, because we still think that what is usually said on the subject is not always clear or explicit enough. Let us now turn to English and take as an example a very useful book - "Sound and Sense" by Laurence Perrine, who thinks that poetry is "as universal as language, and almost as ancient". " . . . Poetry", continues Laurence Perrine, "might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language . . . . Literature, in other words, can be used as a gear for stepping up the intensity and increasing the range of our experience, and as a glass for clarifying i t . . . " 7* His explanations abound in words and sentences which make a deep impression on the reader and certainly enrich the reader's knowledge of what literary or verbal art in general is. But supposing the reader wants to get down to brass tacks, supposing the reader wants to see how all this is put into practice ? In the same book by Laurence Perrine (pp. 4-5) we find a very interesting example.

36 "Suppose", says Perrine, "for instance, that we are interested in eagles. If we want simply to acquire information about eagles, we may turn to an encyclopedia or a book of natural history. There we find that the family Falconidae, to which eagles belong, is characterized by imperforate nostrils, legs of medium length, a hooked bill, the hind toe inserted on a level with the three front ones, and the claws roundly curved and sharp; that land eagles are feathered to the toes and sea-fishing eagles halfway to the toes; that their length is about three feet, the extent of wing seven feet; that the nest is usually placed on some inaccessible cliff; that the eggs are spotted, and do not exceed three; and perhaps that the eagle's "great power of vision, the vast height to which it soars in the sky, the wild grandeur of its abode, have . . . commended it to the poets of all nations." (Encyclopedia Americana, IX, 473-74). But unless we are interested in this information only for practical purposes, we are likely to feel a little disappointed, as though we had grasped the feathers of the eagle but not its soul. True, we have learned many facts about the eagle, but we have missed somehow its lonely majesty, its power, and the "wild grandeur" of its surroundings which would make the eagle something living rather than a mere museum specimen. For the living eagle we must turn to literature." 8* Supposing we follow Perrine's advice and turn to literature - a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson "The Eagle": He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. Here is the living eagle and we cannot regard him any longer as a mere "museum specimen". But how do we do i t ? Probably by turning to the questions, i . e . the questions the reader is recommended to follow: "(1) What is peculiarly effective about the expressions "crooked hands"; "close to the sun"; "ringed with the azure world"; "crawls"; and "like a thunderbolt"?". 9* Well, who could answer?: "what is peculiarly effective about the expression "crooked hands", for example ? Our approach is completely different: we do not ask questions like "what is peculiarly effective about the expressions "crooked hands"; "close to the sun", etc. Also, why does Perrine concentrate on the expression "crooked hands" and not on "he clasps the crag" which is no less "effective" than the former? Or why does he divorce "crooked hands" from "clasps the c r a g " ? etc. We cannot be satisfied with P e r rine's approach to the concrete analysis of the poem. According to our method, we proceed step by step. There are, as we have already pointed out, three distinct steps. The first step is to

37

understand the meanings of all the words. First of all we must understand what "to clasp", "crag", e t c . , mean. We cannot enjoy poetry unless we know the language very well- this is again what we insist on. There are very many people in the world who regard themselves as poets; there are many readers of "modernist" poetry who will disagree with us because they think that poetry is just music, a variety of structural musical patterns. But it has nothing to do with what we expect our philological students to do: they must begin by clearly understanding the meanings of the words "clasp", "crag", "crooked", "azure", "crawl", etc. When they have done that, when they are quite sure they understand properly these words with all the inherent potentialities each of them possesses, they go on to the connotations, i . e . rise to the metasemiotic level. When they have risen to the metasemiotic level, as we have already said above, the metaphoric approach comes in. We now look at the text from the point of view of transferred meanings, of how the meanings are transposed, as it were, on to the second or metasemiotic, or "poetic" level. "To clasp" is "to hold something, tightly or closely". The "crag" is a "high, sharp or rugged mass of rock". If we examine from the point of view of metasemiotics the first line, when we think of "crooked hands" (eagles, birds on the whole, do not usually have "hands"), when the claws of an eagle are metaphorically described as "crooked hands" which are used to get hold of the rock with sharp edges (crag), when we look at the eagle clasping it with those "crooked hands" of his, we cannot fail to enjoy the way the author has succeeded in bringing out the connotations inherently contained in all these words and by skilfully combining them has achieved metaphorical expression. By "metaphorical expression" we mean a complex semantic structure, one of the expressive means used in poetic fiction: we are not dealing here with "hands"; the word "clasp" is not generally used when speaking of birds (birds do not usually "clasp" anything), it is hands that clasp. "Crooked hands": a very interesting metaphor which, of course, should be analysed in great detail, because many critics, for instance, could say that "crooked" is not a very good word to use here since it may have pejorative connotations (cf. "a crooked house", "a crooked man" - there might be a slight connotation of mutilation, of something that is not quite healthy or straight or fair). "Close to the sun in lonely lands": "close to the sun" - a metaphoric expression again, for the eagle is not close to the sun at all: there are millions of kilometres separating the eagle from the sun; " . . . in lonely lands" - many people will say that Tennyson is not a great poet, because "crooked hands" and "lonely lands" are not really suggestive. But as a transferred epithet "lonely lands" would not be so bad. "Ringed with the azure world": again "the azure world" is, of course, not the "world" but probably a metaphoric expression for the sky, the blue sky, the infinity of the all-embracing blue sky. "Ringed with" - this would imply metaphorically again that the whole of the blue sky is there merely to serve as a setting for the eagle; "he stands" is, of course, very expressive because the eagle does not

38

sit and does not lie, but "stands" proudly among the "lonely lands". "The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls": "the wrinkled s e a " - on the metasemiotic level the " s e a " is regarded as something that is f a r b e low, that is never able to r i s e to those magnificent heights. Thus, when the " s e a " is described not as rough or waving but as "wrinkled", the expression is clearly derogatory: the metaphoric use of the word is clearly aimed at contrasting the splendid eagle with the "azure world" which surrounds him, on the one hand, and the lowly "wrinkled s e a " that can do no m o r e than "crawl" there down below, on the other. The eagle watches f r o m his "mountain walls" - he looks down his nose on what is happening there below from his "mountain walls": the word "walls" may be introduced to create metaphorically the idea of s o m e thing that is like a castle or a tower; "and like a thunderbolt he falls" - this is the way (particularly with eagles) to descend on lowly c r e a t u r e s . He falls straight down; when this way of falling is m e t a p h o r ically compared to a "thunderbolt", we are delighted and find thatthis metaphoric comparison is very interesting. So much for analysis on the metasemiotic level. The most important part of our system consists in insisting that the metasemiotic level is by no means the limit, it is by no means what the linguostylistician is supposed to be confined to or where liguostylistic analysis stops. According to our idea of literature and poetry, to stop h e r e would be m e r e formalism, m e r e play with words and connotations. For poetry to be really great it must s e r v e a higher purpose. The next stage, the metametasemiotic stage is reached when all we have said so f a r about the expression and the content on the m e t a semiotic level becomes expression for an altogether different and loftier content. To really understand this poem by Tennyson we must comprehend what its m e t a - m e t a content i s , the general or underlying idea; something probably along the lines of Gorky's " P e s n ' a o Sokole". It becomes interesting only if we are able to apprehend the m e t a m e t a semiotic content. Thus on the semantic level we understood all the words as such: it was absolutely essential that we should understand what a " c r a g " is, what the difference between a "crag" and a "rock" i s , and what the difference between, let us say, "crooked" and "bent" is. We must know the language properly and fully understand the words: each word is a certain expression and a certain content making one whole. That is the semantic level. Then, both the expression and the content of the word on the semantic level goes up to the metasemiotic level, where both the expression and the content of the word become e x pression for the meta or metaphoric content (or the connotation or the image, etc.). And the third, the metametasemiotic stage is when both the expression and the content of the metasemiotic level become expression f o r the meta-meta content. Thus: the semantic level, the metasemiotic level, and the metametasemiotic level. On the s e m a n tic level the expression and the content are balanced, on the m e t a semiotic level both the expression and the content of the semantic level become expression for the meta content; on the meta-meta level both the expression and the content of the metasemiotic level become

39 e x p r e s s i o n f o r the m e t a m e t a s e m i o t i c content. What h a s b e e n said above m u s t not b e taken to m e a n that all a n a l y s i s of fiction should always e m b r a c e all t h e t h r e e l e v e l s : " l i n g u i s t i c " a n a l y s i s is quite often confined to the f i r s t two; t h e t h i r d being r e g a r d e d as f o r m i n g p a r t of l i t e r a r y s t y l i s t i c s . In what follows we shall extensively i l l u s t r a t e this point, including " f o r m a l i s t " p i e c e s which n a t u r a l l y do not p o s s e s s r e a d i l y d i s c o v e r a b l e m e t a - m e t a backgrounds

NOTES 1* See P a r t II, ch. 4. 2* O. S. Akhmanova et a l . , O P r i n c i p a x i Metodax L i n g v o s t i l i s t i c e s kogo I s s l e d o v a n i j a , MGU, M . , 1966, pp. 168f. 3* G. O. Vinokur, I z b r a n n y j e Raboty po Russkomu J a z y k u , "Ucpedgiz", M . , 1959, pp. 388-393, 4* Roman Jakobson, " L i n g u i s t i c s and P o e t i c s " , in: Style in Language, ed. by T h o m a s A. Sebeok, M a s s . , 1960, p. 357. 5* See O. S. Akhmanova et a l . , op. c i t . , p. 171. 6* V. V. Vinogradov, Stilistika. T e o r i j a P o e t i c e s k o j Reci. P o e t i k a . , M. , 1963, pp. 158; 120-121. 7* L a u r e n c e P e r r i n e , Sound and Sense (An Introduction to P o e t r y ) , H a r c o u r t , B r a c e and Company, New Y o r k , 1956, pp. 4f. 8* L a u r e n c e P e r r i n e , op. cit. , pp. 4 - 5 . 9* L a u r e n c e P e r r i n e , op. c i t . , p . 5.

"UNDERSTANDING" AS A LINGUOSTYLISTIC PROBLEM

We have claimed the utter impossibility of "understanding" a poem unless we divide or split up, as it were, the content of words into the ingredients detailed above: 1* this is an essential first step to the comprehension of the language of poetry. The imagery of the poetic language can be assumed to depend on the exploitation of the connotations of words - their inherent connotations being brought into play against a specific background of connotation by evocation or adherent connotation (see above, p. 17). As a result the linguostylistic analysis of a work of verbal art becomes "polydimensional", stereomatic. 2* Poetry, then, is understood and enjoyed only if the reader (or listener) is capable of grasping the subtle interplay of significations, denotations and connotations in the concrete acts of naming. Some more examples: I should like to rise and go Where the golden apples grow; Where below another sky Parrot islands anchored lie, And, watched by cockatoos and goats, Lonely Crusoes building boats; Where are forests, hot as fire, Wide as England, tall as spire, Full of apes and cocoa-nuts, . . Where the knotty crocodile Lies and blinks in the Nile, And the red flamingo flies Hunting fish before his eyes; . . . (R. L. Stevenson, Travel) Each word and word-combination in this poem has a simple, straightforward and unambiguous reference. Knowledge of English implies acquaintance with the immediate and straightforward "individual" r e f erences of "apple", "cocoa-nut", "crocodile", "cockatoo", "goat", etc. But as poetry the text can be understood only if the reader is able to appreciate the connotations by evocation, the specific and original frames of reference into which the author has packed a mass of images; obviously these will be effective only if the outcome of the poet's own experience is coupled with a proper understanding of the background knowledge of his audience. But what is "proper" understanding

41

"Complete" understanding is only attainable by degrees. Everybody who knows some English will understand the above poem on the "first level" or in the "first dimension", i . e . as a piece of "plain" English. But the more deeply a person goes into the text, the more sophisticated he (or she) is, the greater the number and complexity of "levels" of understanding, the deeper the penetration into the different "dimensions". Only then will the reader comprehend the "second code", the "poetic content" or the "secondary" message which, although imaginative, is firmly rooted in the natural "code" of a given natural human language. In our case this "first" code or dimension, or level is bound to be "plain" English, for only in this way could poetry remain significant and true to life. In modernist poetry, however, an altogether new method is being worked out. It is alleged that the first and basic level of understanding can be dispensed with: the reader is expected to, as it were, leap straight into the second level. We are told that poetry, in general, consists in a "perpetual slight alteration of language, words perpetually juxtaposed in new and sudden combinations". What, exactly, is meant by "slight"? When do alterations cease to be "slight" ? How is understanding secured if the principle of double coding is practically abandoned ? These questions have to be discussed in connection with more examples. To begin with, here is an extract from a poem which, although "modern", is obviously "good": The star that loosed this arrow down the dark Is centuries long extinguished, and its ray Clean as a pinpoint, perfect to the mark Shivers not yet to void. Bodies decay Life being put asunder, and sweet sound No longer holds the air where streams are bound. (Ruth Benedict) 3* Let us begin with a discussion of the first line: "The star that loosed this arrow . . . " - the metacontent which is expressed in this line has to be examined, has to be understood. The word "to loose" was here chosen by the author and not to "loosen", because Ruth Benedict probably thought that "loose" was so much more poetical, unusual, and probably that was the reason why she preferred that word to the more ordinary one. We think that to "loosen" is the more natural, simple word: this is what Fowler says on the subject: between "loose" and "loosen" there could be some differentiated sense, but by and large, the "en-verb" is the verb that is in ordinary use, i . e . "loosen" is much commoner when you speak, for instance, of freeing something or somebody from constraint or making free or loose, e . g . : "After some time wine loosened his tongue". For somebody who had not studied this subject specially "loosen" would be the only word to use here. But the sentence "Wine loosed his tongue" is quite acceptable, and nobody would be surprised to find "loosed" here instead of "loosened". But there is also a distinct literary allusion: in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" the verb "to loose" is connected with " a r row" as follows:

42 Oberon: That very time I saw, but thou couldst not Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the West, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon, And the imperial votaress passed on In maiden meditation, fancy free. (Act II, Sc. I, 155f.) This brings us to what may be described as the philological context. "The star that loosed this arrow... " could have been suggested by Shakespeare's well-known passage. " . . . Centuries long" - a very unusual adverbial modifier, modelled on the nonproductive "age-long". Does "clean" mean "sharp" or is it a "portmanteau" of "sharp" (pointed) and " c l e a r " ? Is "shiver" in "shiver to void" converted from "shivers"? Certainly not the one we find in "shiver with something". For something to be "put asunder", especially if it is "life", is not an ordinary (natural) way to be "put". "Sounds . . hold the air", " . . streams are bound" - in what sense? Not "ice-bound", of course, but what is the "binding" factor? No doubt analyses along those lines are imperative if "modern" poetry is to be taken seriously. One has, on the other hand, every right to keep aloof when "modern" poetry ignores the communicative function of language altogether, when the "suddenness of combinations" becomes the aim, the object of the whole process. The problem of "understanding", which is among the basic problems of linguostylistics, has been brilliantly expounded by I. A. Richards in "Variant Readings and Misreadings". 4* The article contains a very interesting instance of misunderstanding Shakespeare's 66th Sonnet: "a budding M. A. in teaching" failed completely to apprehend the message of this sonnet - a sonnet so fraught with Shakespearean attitudes . This event has been the starting point of a disquisition on the problem of verbal art: in what ways is or should speech be manipulated for it to achieve the various effects recognized as aesthetic ? The lack of understanding became apparent when the student - a native speaker of English - understood the second line of Sonnet 66 as meaning "to behold a born beggar abandoned". Here is the text of Sonnet 66: Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, As, to behold Desert a beggar born, And needy Nothing trimm'd in jollity And purest Faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded Honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden Virtue rudely strumpeted, And right Perfection wrongfully disgraced, And Strength by limping Sway disabled, And Art made tongue-tied by Authority,

43

And Folly, doctor-like, controlling Skill, And simple Truth miscall'd Simplicity, And captive Good attending captain 111: Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. I. A. Richards' argument runs as follows: the proper understanding of the sonnet is based on the parallel structure of eleven consecutive lines, which all depend on "as to behold something good badly treated" or "something bad honoured" - all in the same order, subject first and predicate second. It is this repeated pattern which forces the reader to put "Desert" in the class of "something good" and "a beggar born" in the "badly treated class". Without these parallels in order and sense, it might be possible to understand the line as meaning "to behold a born beggar abandoned". But this would have nothing to do with the actual words of the sonnet, which is complete in itself. Not infrequently the understanding of one line involves an extensive philological study of the complete works of the writer in question. Among the "obscure" Shakespearean lines there is the well-known "more relative than this": . . . . I'll have these players Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle, I'll observe his looks; I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen May be the devil; and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds More relative than this. The play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. (Hamlet, II, i i . , 653-665) The "dictionary" meaning of "relative" is "pertinent, relevant". The meaning in the passage above is "more direct", "closer", i . e . one that can be better related or made more direct. To "read" this meaning "into" the line one must have proof. This is found, for example, in "the fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she", "finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deep", etc., where the suffix "-ive" must be construed as roughly a synonym of "-able", "-ible". By bringing together examples of this kind the fact that the suffix "-ive" was a modal suffix for Shakespeare - who knew so well how to break down a word and then recompose it - seems to be established with a very fair degree of c e r tainty . In the same way the fact that to Shakespeare "limb" could mean "member of a (metaphorical) body politic of Rome of which Caesar was the effective head" has to be proved by minute philological r e search if the underscored line in the following extract is to make

44 sense: . . . . O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers. Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times. Woe to the hands that shed this costly blood, Over thy wounds now do I prophesy, Which, like dumb mouths, do open their ruby lips To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue, A curse shall light upon the limbs of men; Domestic fury and fierce civil strife, Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;... (Julius Caesar, III, i . ) When we spoke of the two levels - the semantic level and the metasemiotic level 5* - we assumed that the knowledge of words and their potential connotations, the connotations that they can be called upon to express when the author or the analyst or both rise to the metasemiotic level is, comparatively speaking, simple and easy for a more or less educated person to grasp and understand. There may be situations, however, where the metasemiotic level cannot be reached by the reader unless his background knowledge is of a specific, historically conditioned, traditionally bound character. Thus, for instance, in the following passage from one of John Donne's Sonnets: At the round world's imagin'd corners blow Your trumpets angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go.. . he uses metaphors which cannot possibly be apprehended unless the reader is familiar with certain dogmas of Christianity. If we compare this extract from John Donne with the one from Tennyson, 6* we shall see that the difference of about three centuries is very important. In the case of Donne, the knowledge of words as such would not take us anywhere: we could not possibly understand the poem even on the metasemiotic level, to say nothing of the metametasemiotic one. To comprehend the images (the metaphors being very complex and traditionbound), we must know that according to the teachings of Christianity when Christ arises from the dead, there will be four angels who will stand at the four corners of the world and blow trumpets. And then all people who had been dead and buried by that time will arise too. Unless we are acquainted with the religious beliefs of Donne's time, we shall not be able to understand what Donne means by " . . . numberless infinities of souls". But with the required previous or background knowledge we are quite capable of understanding what the metaphor is, what the image is based on. To understand the metametasemiotic content of this sonnet, we must read the whole sonnet and then we shall see that Donne was an optimistic Renaissance poet and therefore

45 the metametasemiotic content is rebirth and victory over death. This, however, would be only the first step. For a deeper penetration, a wider study of the subject in general, and the work of the author in question in particular, would be required. It must be noted that it is very difficult to tell what the metametasemiotic content of each particular piece of verbal art is because it is global: it cannot be fully apprehended unless it is perused in its entirety. NOTES 1* See above, p. 29. 2* Cf. O. S. Akhmanova et a l . , O Principax i Metodax Lingvostilistideskogo Issledovanija, MGU, M . , 1966, p. 167f. In the extract from Wordsworth, adduced above, for example, the comparison of the evening to a nun has more than one dimension. The calm of the evening obviously means "worship", "trappings of the nun" visible to everyone. Thus it suggests not merely holiness but, in the total poem, even a hint of pharisaical holiness with which the girl's careless innocence, itself a symbol of her continuous worship, stands in contrast. This is poetry! In this there is a "perpetual slight alternation of language, words perpetually juxtaposed in new and sudden combinations". (T. S. Eliot) These are the things which the critic has read into lines. Suppose we were asked to analyse the poem in the same way, the probability of our reaching the same conclusion is very low. But whatever the approach and method, we will be in perfect agreement upon one thing - the polydimensionality of the whole. 3* See in M. Mead, Continuities in Cultural Evolution, New Haven and London, 1964, p. 39. 4* Style in Language, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, Mass., I960, p. 241. 5* See above, Ch. 2. 6* See above, p. 36.

4

THE FUNCTIONS OF SPEECH

The concept of "functions of speech" has been studied from different points of view, including the psychological, and, m o r e recently, the information theory ones. Spoken " m e s s a g e s " may be oriented towards the speaker, the listener or the object (the content). All m e s s a g e s a r e communicated through a code. The word "code" denotes not an agglomeration of material entities, but a set of rules which specify (lay down) a system of regular one-to-one correspondence between certain units or entities (fragments) of expression on the one hand, and elements or components of content, on the other. From among a number of listings we choose Roman Jakobson's wellknown table 1* in which the system or "ensemble" of what he calls "functions of language" is presented in such a way as to reflect the modern approaches of psycholinguistics and information theory: CONTEXT REFERENTIAL MESSAGE POETIC ADDRESSER

ADDRESSEE

EMOTIVE

CON ATI VE CONTACT PHATIC CODE METALINGUAL

As has been mentioned above, a message may be differently "oriented", i . e . one of its potential functions may be found to prevail. Thus when

47 the speaker is mainly concerned with his own side, when he expresses his attitude toward what he is speaking about, the emotive function comes f i r s t . When it is primarily a question of exhorting the a d d r e s s e e , the conative function takes precedence. When the "object", the "context" or " r e f e r e n t " is the centre of attention, we think of the "referential" function. The metalinguistic (or "metalingual" in Roman Jakobson's t e r m i n ology) function is oriented towards language itself instead of the "object" or "context": language h e r e is used to speak about language. 2* Very often this function is by no means confined to highly sophisticated societies or specific situations of philological teaching. Ordinary people in ordinary everyday situations keep "talking about talking" in a great variety of ways and at different levels of abstraction. When a language is used to talk about language, it is called a metalanguage or a language of the second o r d e r . Quite often the "phatic" 3* function becomes all important. This is observed when the speaker does not seek to pass on some information to the listener but when his aim is to "establish a contact", to create a natural and unstrained atmosphere. Very often using speech "phatically" is a necessary (or even indispensable) step to the e s t a b lishing of communication in the proper sense of the word. Some examples: "Nice again today. Oh, it's you. How's things? Ah, well, that's life. I'm pleased to meet you", and what R. Quirk calls "a r a t h e r extreme instance": "Have you had a busy day, d e a r ? " Aunt Lin asked, opening h e r table napkin and arranging it across her plump lap. This was a sentence that made sense but had no meaning. It was as much an overture to dinner as the spreading of h e r napkin and the exploratory movement of h e r right foot as she located the footstool which compensated f o r h e r short legs. She expected no answer, or r a t h e r , being unaware that she had asked the question, she did not listen to his a n s w e r . " (The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey) 4* Most controversial of all is the "poetic" function, orientation towards the m e s s a g e for its own sake. The t e r m is misleading, for the a d j e c tive "poetic" is quite naturally associated with poetry. 5* At the same time the borderline between "prose" and "poetry" is becoming more and more blurred. In Olga Akhmanova's original lectures the point was proved in the following way: two extracts f r o m J e r o m e K. J e r o m e ' s "Three Men in the Boat" were written out the "poetry way", i . e . as stanza divided into rhythmically balanced lines. We print f i r s t the original passages as they appear in the book: "But the r i v e r - chill and weary, with the ceaseless rain drops falling on its brown and sluggish w a t e r s , with the sound as of a woman, weeping low in some dark chamber; while the woods, all dark and silent, shrouded in their mists of vapour, standing like ghosts with eyes reproachful, like the ghosts of evil actions, like the ghosts of friends neglected - is a spirit-haunted water through

48 the land of vain regrets". "The river - with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beechtrunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood path, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weirs' white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far sail, making soft the air with glory - is a golden fairy stream". Here, now, are the "versified" versions: But the river - chill and weary, With the ceaseless rain drops falling On its brown and sluggish waters, With the sound as of a woman, Weeping low in some dark chamber; While the woods, all dark and silent, Shrouded in their mists of vapour, Stand like ghosts with eyes reproachful, Like the ghosts of evil actions, Like the ghosts of friends neglected Is a spirit-haunted water Through the land of vain regrets. The river - with the sunlight flashing From its dancing wavelets, Gilding gold the grey-green beechtrunks, Glinting through the dark, cool wood path, Chasing shadows o'er the shallows, Flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, Throwing kisses to the lilies, Wantoning with the weirs' white waters, Silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, Brightening every tiny townlet, Making sweet each lane and meadow, Lying tangled in the rushes, Peeping, laughing, from each inlet, Gleaming gay on many a far sail, Making soft the air with glory Is a golden fairy stream. The "versified" versions were presented to the audience as genuine poetry, i . e . nothing was said about their origin. The experiment was successful beyond all expectation. Even educated native speakers of English who happened to be present at Prof. Akhmanova's lecture were completely "taken in". Who could be the Poet? (it was alleged that this was the work of a well-known English writer). Poe? Longfellow? Wordsworth? And quite naturally there was much amuse-

49 ment when the truth was finally told. 6* It is easiest to exemplify the "poetic" or "metasemiotic" "orientation" in terms of preferred phonetic structures, which are then viewed as a realization of the "internal bond" between sound and meaning. This has given rise not only to phonostylistics, but also to a flourishing new science - paralinguistics. According to D. Crystal and R. Quirk, the taxonomies of this science are the following: Voice qualities - whisper, breathiness, huskiness, creak, falsetto, resonance. Voice qualifications - laugh, giggle, tremulousness, sob, cry. 7* The "metasemiotic orientation" of speech stands out in the language of advertising, of publicity agents, the titles of popular radio-programs, e t c . , where very colourful instances may be found. In this genre the "metasemiotic" function is certainly not "poetic" and linguistically most apparent, because it has nothing to do with the very complicated problems of literary merit, aesthetic value, etc. 8* This "function" is found here in its bluntest and most grotesque form. The masses of instances which can be written out by the hundreds are often linguistically quite interesting. Unfortunately an analysis of some of the more typical gradations and assonances, of grotesque metaphors and juxtapositions, e t c . , can not be demonstrated here. We confine ourselves to a mere listing of a few examples: More

perfume,

Soft, flower-fresh, fragrant, softer

feel.

Of course it'll be a lovely hair-do She started right - with New Halo the beauty shampoo.

Name your headache It's gone with a single Soridon.

Clearasil opens, cleans, clears up pimples You don't miss a moment's fun. CLEARASIL America's No. I Pimple Cream DINESH SUITINGS Festive

feelings...

gay outings...

DINESH... the fabric

of distinction for people of distinction. Using this kind of materials is justified because it exempts the linguostylist from getting out of his depth, i . e . taking up the "aesthetic" function in good earnest. Advertisements and the like help to bring home to the student what exactly "orientation towards the message" means. When the speech event is viewed primarily as message, when

50

the interest is focused on the way the message is constructed, a r ranged, made up, moulded or shaped - this is where the metasemiotic function comes first. NOTES 1* Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics", in: Style in Language, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, M a s s . , 1960, p. 353. 2* "Jazyk "vtorogo por'adka", t . e . takoj jazyk, na kotorom govor'at o jazyke ze". See:O.S. Akhmanova, Slovar' Lingvisticeskix Terminov (The Dictionary of Linguistic Terms), 2nd ed., "Sovetskaja Enciklopedija", M. , 1969, p. 232. 3* What the Dictionary calls "kontaktoustanavlivaju^fc'aja" (p. 508). See also M. L. A. Drazdauskiene, "Mo2no li objektivno vydelit' reff'v navlivajuScPaja funkcija recfi" (Avtoreferat kandidatskoj dissertacii), teta", M. , 1969, No. 6; M-L. A. Drazdauskiene, "Kontaktoustanavlivajuscfaja funkcija rcffi" (Avtoreferat kandidatskoj dissertacii), MGU, M. , 1970. 4* See in: Randolph Quirk, The Use of English, 2nd ed. , Longmans, 1968, p. 63. 5* It is therefore necessary to think of a less ambiguous term. As a working solution the term "metasemiotic" has been suggested. See: Olga Akhmanova et a l . , O Principax i metodax lingvisticeskogo issledovanija, M. , MGU, 1966, p. 169. 6* A phonological analysis of the transmutation was carried out in a course-paper under the supervision of G. G. Egorov. 7* D. Crystal and R. Quirk, Systems of Prosodic and Paralinguistic Features in English, Heffer, 1964, p. 38. 8* In the history of English "genres" it is traced back to the "romantic lyric". This is what Ian A. Gordon says about it: " . . . Prose of this type which has taken over the function and some of the techniques of the romantic lyric, was highly regarded in the nineteenth century. Today it seems almost an alien tongue in any serious literary context - though it continues with unabated vigour an extra-literary life in the special world of advertising. . . Romantic prose could be found in reputable journals as late as the 1920's. Today it is mainly confined to lower-grade fiction and advertising... " (Ian A. Gordon, The Movement of English Prose, Longmans, 1966, pp. 159f.).

5

IS IT POSSIBLE TO EMULATE THE STYLE OF A GREAT WORK OF FICTION?

To continue and complete the unfinished manuscript of an author who has been dead for more than 150 years leads, of necessity, to problems over language and style. If the novel is continued in normal contemporary English, certain words, phrases and expressions are bound to jar on the reader. But if a conscious and pedantic attempt is made to write in early 19th Century English, the inhibiting effect of concentrating on philological details might prevent due attention being given to the development of plot, character, atmosphere and the distinctive narrative spirit of the original author. Of Jane Austen's unfinished fragments, "The Watsons" (which she herself abandoned for unknown reasons, probably in 1805) is the only one which has been completed since her death; and no less than three versions of this exist. They were written in 1922, 1928 and 1958 in 20th Century English. The fragment "Sanditon" is, in many ways, more interesting as Jane Austen had no intention of abandoning it herself and was still working on it at the time of her death. She began the novel on January 27, 1817 and died on July 17, 1817, leaving behind 26, 000 words, which contain an interesting gallery of characters, many lively conversations, some evocative descriptions of a seaside resort and very little plot. In attempting to complete "Sanditon" I naturally enough preferred to give priority to the pace of the plot, the way in which the characters should develop, the landscape where the original novel had been set - and to try, as far as possible, to make all these consistent with Jane Austen's own opinions and principles. The problem of craftsmanship - the actual selection of the 90, 000 odd words which were to complete the manuscript - received, by comparison, far less attention. Very few of the words Jane Austen uses are actually obsolete today, but in almost every paragraph of hers certain words and expressions occur which differ, in slight and almost indefinable ways, from our own. It is, however, in the combination of her words and the construction of her sentences that Jane Austen's style in writing is unmistakable. Those perfectly balanced sentences of hers also owe a great deal to a childhood spent in reading the King James Version of the Bible aloud every morning at Stevenage parsonage - an instinctive training in the usage of good English, which is not a normal part of modern education. But her reading and response throughout her lifetime all contributed to her individual style, which was then polished by her own wit and genius into something we now recognise as "the

52

language of Jane Austen". And to attempt to copy all or any of this by design seemed to me an impossible task. With regard to the language I myself should use in completing "Sanditon" I therefore decided on a position of compromise. For a period of two years, I read and reread Jane Austen's six novels in the hope that her vocabulary, her turn of phrasing and her variations of construction would be the ones which might come naturally into my mind while attempting to finish her novel. Some of her words, which differ from our own usage (e.g. "till" instead of "until"; and "perceive", "discern" or "descry" instead of "see") I consciously adopted. I also deliberately eliminated any modern expressions as I went along (e.g. changing "cope with" into "contend with" and "stripped down to its essentials" into "reduced to its essential elements"). Without striving to reproduce Jane Austen's own tone or style on purpose, this method has imparted at least a faint flavour of the original, which seemed to me more appropriate for the completion of "Sanditon" than normal 20th Century English. I also noticed that whenever I abandoned my diet of Jane Austen and read an occasional contemporary novel, my sentences and vocabulary immediately became more up-to-date and had to be rewritten. It has been suggested by the Editor that it would be an interesting experiment to compare, according to the principles and methods of linguostylistics, passages of text on fairly analogous subjects selected from Jane Austen's first eleven chapters of "Sandition" and my final nineteen; and perhaps we may reach some conclusions whether the unscientific method of work adopted shows any interesting scientific result. Description of seaside. Chapter 4 page 31. 1. At Trafalgar House, rising at a little distance behind the Terrace, the travellers were safely set down; and all was happiness and joy between papa and mama and their children; while Charlotte, having r e ceived possession of her apartment, found amusement enough in standing at her ample Venetian window and looking over the miscellaneous foreground of unfinished buildings, waving linen and tops of houses, to the sea, dancing and sparkling in sunshine and freshness. Chapter 15 page 139. 2. Charlotte tried to make herself believe that Miss Brereton, like herself, was merely enjoying the prospect of their bathe and the beauty of the open scenery spread out before them under a bright midday sun. Headland after weathered headland could be seen stretching into the distance beyond the beach of polished pebbles edging a tidy blue sea. A few clouds hung on the horizon and a few gulls went wheeling and crying overhead, but otherwise the shore was deserted. The Heywood family. Chapter 2 page 15. 1. Mr. and Mrs. Heywood never left home. Marrying early and having a very numerous family, their movements had long been limited to one small circle; and they were older in habits than in age. Except-

53

ing two journeys to London in the year to receive his dividends, Mr. Heywood went no farther than his feet or his well-tried old horse could carry him; and Mrs. Heywood's adventurings were only now and then to visit her neighbours in the old coach which had been new when they married and fresh lined on their eldest son's coming of age ten years ago. Chapter 30 page 429. 2. Mr. and Mrs. Heywood's reception of their daughter on her unexpected arrival home was greatly to their credit as sensible parents. Their surprise, when she walked in across the fields to join the family party at tea, without an escort, a trunk or advance notice of her intentions, can be readily imagined; but after their first exclamations, they were very willing to listen to her explanations, which were delivered in so collected a manner as to cause more astonishment than alarm. In walking from the road, Charlotte had plenty of time to r e hearse what she had to tell them. The Parker family. Chapter 9 page 72. 1. The Parkers were no doubt a family of imagination and quick feelings , and while the eldest brother found vent for his superfluity of sensation as a projector, the sisters were perhaps driven to dissipate theirs in the invention of odd complaints. The whole of their mental vivacity was evidently not so employed; part was laid out in a zeal for being useful. It would seem that they must either be very busy for the good of others or else extremely ill themselves. Some natural delicacy of constitution, in fact, with an unfortunate turn for medicine, especially quack medicine, had given them an early tendency at various times to various disorders; the rest of their sufferings was from fancy, the love of distinction and the love of the wonderful. Chapter 13 page 109 2. Shortly after midday, a message arrived from Miss Diana confirming the projected family dinner; and by five o'clock Sidney and Arthur could be observed from an upper window escorting their sisters up the hill. The very real pleasure which the whole family then shared on being together could only be remarked by Charlotte with approval. Her own large family of brothers and sisters had scarcely ever been separated and she wondered if they would undergo such a great improvement in collective amiability as did the Parkers on their r e union. Diana, always active and talkative, was more mellow and goodhumoured; Miss Parker less eccentric in her facial contortions; Mr. Parker more exuberant than ever; and Arthur wore the look of complete satisfaction which he usually reserved for his food. The Miss Beauforts. Chapter 10 page 85. 1. The other girls, two Miss Beauforts, were just such young ladies as may be met within at least one family out of three throughout the kingdom. They had tolerable complexions, showy figures, an upright decided carriage and an assured look; they were very accomplished and very ignorant, their time being divided between such pursuits as

54

might attract admiration, and those labours and expedients of dexterous ingenuity by which they could dress in a style much beyond what they ought to have afforded; they were some of the first in every change of fashion. And the object of all was to captivate some man of much better fortune than their own. Chapter 18 page 192. 2. The Miss Beauforts were very disappointed at being cheated of an early introduction; and they were certainly no longer content to r e main on their balcony now these two personable young men were to be perceived strolling about admiring the Sanditon views. Indeed, they felt a definite obligation to improve the landscape for them immediately by dotting graceful feminine silhouettes wherever they should be most visible. Miss Letitia carried her easel out of doors and began moving it from sand to shingle, from hill to Terrace with tireless and unselfish activity. No concern for completing her own sketches interfered with her sense of duty to adorn whatever vista might r e quire her presence. Scenery, viewed from driving in a carriage. Chapter 19 page 231-232. 1. Her new vantage point on the box was indeed a pleasant one and for some minutes she was content to look around her from the peak of the coast road they had now reached. An occasional cloud dimmed the bright sunshine for a moment; but the day seemed the most perfect of that summer; and Charlotte's veiy position for enjoying it, perched up in the open air, with the high, beautiful sky above her and the sea constantly changing its colours as it dashed against the cliffs below her, made her altogether in charity with Sidney, who had chosen it for her. Chapter 4 page 28-29. 2. They were now approaching the church and neat village of old Sanditon, which stood at the foot of the hill they were afterwards to ascend - a hill whose side was covered with the woods and enclosures of Sanditon House and whose height ended in an open down where the new buildings might soon be looked for. A branch only of the valley, winding more obliquely towards the sea, gave a passage to an inconsiderable stream, and formed at its mouth a third habitable division in a small cluster of fishermen's houses. The original village contained little more than cottages; but the spirit of the day had been caught, as Mr. Parker observed with delight to Charlotte, and two or three of the best of them were smartened up with a white curtain and "Lodgings to Let". Charlotte's observations of other people. Chapter 6 page 42 1. These feelings were not the result of any spirit of romance in Charlotte herself. No, she was a very sober-minded young lady, sufficiently well-read in novels to supply her imagination with amusement, but not at all unreasonably influenced by them; and while she pleased herself the first five minutes with fancying the persecution which ought to be the lot of the interesting Clara, especially in the

55 form of the most barbarous conduct on Lady Denham's side, she found no reluctance to admit from subsequent observation that they appeared to be on very comfortable terms. She could see nothing worse in Lady Denham than the sort of old-fashioned formality of always calling her Miss Clara; nor anything objectionable in the degree of observance and attention which Clara paid. On one side it seemed protecting kindness, on the other grateful and affectionate respect. Chapter 14 page 127. 2. While she did not censure these opinions, Charlotte felt all the impropriety of his making them known to her, who was little more than a stranger. And yet Sidney Parker's manners were so obviously those of the fashionable world that she also felt both priggish and provincial for daring to criticise them. His ease and openness and the delight with which he seized on anything which might contribute to his own amusement or that of others - all these, she conceded, were perfectly allowable in someone who spent the greater part of his time in the wider society of London. But in her narrow and limited experience, which so far had extended little beyond her own comfortable and wellregulated family circle, a very different style of behaviour was practised and a very different scale of values the only acceptable pattern. Personal relationships. Chapter 7 page 47. 1. The first object of the Parkers, when their house was cleared of morning visitors, was to get out themselves. The Terrace was the attraction to all. Everybody who walked must begin with the Terrace; and there, seated on one of the two green benches by the gravel walk, they found the united Denham party; but though united in the gross, very distinctly divided again: the two superior ladies being at one end of the bench, and Sir Edward and Miss Brereton at the other. Charlotte's first glance told her that Sir Edward's air was that of a lover. There could be no doubt of his devotion to Clara. How Clara received it was less obvious, but she was inclined to think not very favourably; for though sitting thus apart with him (which probably she might not have been able to prevent) her air was calm and grave. Chapter 20 page 257. 2. The others were left - in an even arrangement of four couples - to sort themselves out as best they could, to wait around for Sidney when he emerged from the shop and to try, by whatever means they could, to explore Brinshore's shingle, seaweed and surroundings with the partner of their own choice. Charlotte counted herself well out of the business. She left them all in high spirits and good humour, eager to be happy, and quite determined to pair themselves off with someone who would make them so. But as Sidney was probably the chief attraction for at least three of the young women, and Miss Brereton the obvious magnet to at least three of the young men, there was bound to be a certain amount of disappointment and a making do with secondbests .

56 Editor's Note For the present manual there was time only for analysis in terms of rhythm. By using the methods described in "Syntax: Theory and Method" 1* Tatjana Sisfkina has proved the two texts to possess the same rhythmical structure. In all passages the length of syntagms varies within the same limits, i . e . from 3 to 13 syllables. They are practically identical in their inner structure too. Thus (1) the average length of the interaccentual interval is 2.5 - 3 syllables; (2) all the clausulae have masculine and feminine endings only. Although there is a slight difference in anacrusis - a little more variety in Jane Austen's own - the two texts are basically the same in this respect also: anapaestic and choreeic. 2* NOTES 1* See Tatjana Siskina "The Prosodic Segmentation of Discourse", in: Syntax: Theory and Method, ed. by Olga Akhmanova, MGU, M., 1972. 2* The results of the complete rhythmical analysis of the material under investigation are described in Tatjana Siskina, "The Etics and Emics of Prosody", The Prosody of Speech, ed. by Olga Akhmanova, MGU, M . , 1973.

PART III STYLE IN TERMS OF MAJOR SYNTAX

It has repeatedly been stated by Olga Akhmanova that the division of sentences into three main types - loose, balanced and periodic (which was f i r s t suggested by Simeon Potter) - is of considerable i m portance for the student of linguostylistics. This is how the t h r e e types of sentence structure are defined in his well-known book: 1* "In the so-called loose sentence the w r i t e r or speaker states fact after fact just as these occur to him, freely and artlessly. Daniel Defoe opens The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe with a long, loose, rambling sentence which, nevertheless, grips our attention at once: "I was born in the y e a r 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner, of Bremen, who settled f i r s t at Hull: he got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his t r a d e , lived afterward at York, f r o m whence he had m a r r i e d my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and f r o m whom I was called Robinson Kreutzneer; but, by usual corruption of words in England, we a r e now called, nay, we call ourselves, and write our name Crusoe, and so my companions always called m e . " The style is conversational. We seem to h e a r the author talking quietly to us in the f i r s t person and telling us the story of his life. This imaginary autobiography seems at once factual and r e a l . 2* The loose sentence proceeds in a s e r i e s of statements, each new clause developing f r o m the last. The r e a d e r may stop at almost any comma or semi-colon marking off the p a r t s of the longer sentence as complete in themselves. Thus, Rhythmless speech o r writing is like the flow of liquid from a pipe or a tap; it runs with smooth monotony from when it is turned on to when it is turned off, provided it is clear stuff; if it is turbid, the smooth flow is queerly and abruptly checked from time to time and then resumed. (H.W. Fowler) One Christmas was so much like another, in those y e a r s , around the sea-town corner now, and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never r e m e m b e r whether it snowed f o r six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six; or whether the ice broke and the skating g r o c e r vanished like a snowman through a white trap-door

60 on the same Christmas day that the mince-pies finished Uncle Arnold and we tobogganed down the seward hill, all the afternoon, on the best t e a - t r a y , and M r s . Griffiths complained, and we threw a snowball at her niece, and my hands burned so, with the heat and the cold, when I held them in front of the f i r e , that I cried f o r twenty minutes and then had some jelly. (Dylan Thomas) A loose sentence begins with the main idea, while clauses containing less important information follow it. A periodic sentence, instead of beginning with the main idea, builds on to it gradually: "In the periodic sentence the climax comes at the close. The r e a d e r is held in s u s pense until at last he h e a r s what he has long been waiting f o r , and only then is he able to comprehend the meaning of the sentence as a whole": 3* The rolling period, the stately epithet, the noun rich in poetic a s sociation, the subordinate clauses that give the sentence weight and magnificence, the grandeur like that of wave following wave in the open sea; there is no doubt that in all this there is something inspiring. (W. S. Maugham) The degree of periodicity may vary depending on how the sentences a r e constructed: if the subject and predicate stand together at the end, the sentence is strongly periodic. If they are interrupted by modifiers, the sentence is moderately periodic. Much expository prose today e x hibits a mixture of loose and moderately periodic sentences. The a c tual number of each type, the correlations between them depend on the w r i t e r and on the context. The third type to be discussed in the present chapter is the balanced sentence structure: "The balanced sentence satisfies a profound human d e s i r e for equipoise and symmetry. It may express two s i m i l a r thoughts in parallelism or two opposing ones in antithesis. Such p r o verbial saying as "like m a s t e r like man", "More haste less speed", " F i r s t come f i r s t s e r v e d " , and "least said soonest mended" probably r e p r e s e n t a primitive Indo-European sentence-type which survives in many l a n d s . " 4* Before the 20th century sentences with semantically and prosodically balanced clauses were very popular with many w r i t e r s : Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not i n deed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our l i t e r a t u r e , but the zeal with which he laboured for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked at temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame. (Thomas B. Macaulay)

61 Even a cursory glance at modern English writing shows that it is still very much alive: T h e r e f o r e , potent as t h e r e may be manifestations of internal d i s ease, decisive as they may be one of these days, it is not in them that we should put our t r u s t , but in our own strong a r m s and the justice of our cause. (Winston S. Churchill) If a f r e e society cannot help the many who a r e poor, it cannot save the few who a r e rich. (John F. Kennedy) Further r e s e a r c h e s in this field, conducted in the English Department of Moscow University 5* proved that the division suggested by Simeon Potter for sentence structure can also, with very good reason, be a p plied to the ' supra-phrasal unity', which in the orthographic version is presented in the form of p a r a g r a p h s . The loose paragraph consists of a gradually unfolding concatenation of sentences, each subsequent sentence adding some new information to the previous one. A new statement may logically develop f r o m the previous ones or be related to them through association: We - the we consisting of my wife and myself - left Liverpool for Boston on the 24th August, 1861, in the Arabia, one of the Cunard's North American mail packets. We had determined that my wife should return alone at the beginning of winter when I intended to go to a p a r t of the country in which, under the existing circumstances of the w a r , a lady might not feel herself altogether comfortable. I proposed staying in America over the winter, and returning in the spring; and this p r o g r a m m e I have c a r r i e d out with sufficient e x a c t ness. (A. Trollope) A periodic paragraph is formatted as a s e r i e s of statements bearing on the same topic which finds its complete generalized expression at the close of the paragraph in its last sentence: For what enables men to know m o r e than their ancestors is that they s t a r t with a knowledge of what their ancestors have already learned. They a r e able to do advanced experiments which increase knowledge because they do not have to repeat the elementary e x p e r iments . It is tradition which brings them to the point where advanced experimentation is possible. This is the meaning of tradition. This is why society can be progressive only if it conserves its tradition. (W. Lippmann) In a balanced paragraph the purport is presented as an opposition or a juxtaposition of two contrasting or s i m i l a r thoughts. This opposition is usually made even m o r e clear with the help of formal syntacticstylistic and prosodic means. The main principle of the syntactic-

62 stylistic organization of the balanced paragraph is symmetry: The patriotism of the West has been quite as keen as that of the North, and has produced results as memorable; but it has sprung f r o m a different source and been conducted and animated by a different sentiment. National greatness and support of the law have been the ideas of the North; national greatness and abolition of slavery have been those of the West. How they a r e to agree as to t e r m s , when between them they have crushed the South - that is the difficulty. (A. Trollope) In the course of centuries different literary schools favoured different formal types of linguostylistic sentence structure explained and i l l u s trated above. It goes without saying that preference for a certain s t r u c tural variety usually goes hand in hand with a predilection f o r a c e r tain kind of words and word-combinations. It is difficult to think of a simple and equivocal example without going back to Dr. Samuel Johnson's well-known pronouncements on the subject. Although, on the whole, Johnson appears to have approved of Addison's speech-based p r o s e , he found it lacking in "studied a m plitude" and "deligently rounded periods". Johnson himself went in for what Ian A. Gordon describes as "a blend of neo-Quintilian rhetoric with a heavily latinised vocabulary" and would "translate from a native to a classical f o r m , f r o m a short word to a long one". 6* In the shaping of modern prose three different tendencies or "codes" may be traced: the speech-based, the prose of display, and Johnsonianlatinised. "It has not wit enough to keep it s w e e t , " said Johnson of "The Rehearsal" and then immediately corrected himself by " t r a n s lating" the sentence into "It has not vitality enough to p r e s e r v e it from putrefaction". "Translations" and " p a r a p h r a s e s " of this kind fill the pages of most books on English style. Alan Warner offers an excellent example of such "translation" by George Orwell - "a parody of the worst kind of modern jargon" - of a passage f r o m the Bible: "I r e turned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all". G. Orwell " p a r a p h r a s e s " (or " t r a n s lates") it into: "objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. " "We need to be on our guard", continues Warner, "against . . . those vague blanket p h r a s e s that sound impressive but muffle the sharp edge of our meanings. " 7 * For the literate r e a d e r of the 19th century "simplicity and d i r e c t ness w e r e suspect - education should surely produce something m o r e ambitious than their own limited vocabulary and speech patterns. For the newly literate, the prose that descended f r o m Johnson appeared m o r e "educated" than the prose that descended f r o m Addison. " 8* This is certainly still very often the case, especially in modern

63

• "journalese". It is also discoverable in some of the best and most widely read books of science. Thus, for example: "As soon as some ancient m e m b e r in the great s e r i e s of the P r i mates came to be less arboreal, owing to a change in its manner of procuring subsistence, or to some change in the surrounding conditions, its habitual manner of progression would have been modified; and thus it would have been rendered m o r e strictly quadrupedal or bipedal." (Ch. Darwin, The Descent of Man) "The better w r i t e r s of general prose of the present century have moved away from this way of writing. Yet even today it p e r s i s t s in some a r e a s of expositional and scientific p r o s e , sometimes degenerating into m e r e jargon. Serious writing, particularly on topics which n e c e s sarily deal with abstract ideas, calls f o r a technical vocabulary, f o r which Latin and to a l e s s e r extent Greek have proved to be the best sources. But even today, the dividing line between legitimate technicality and abstraction, and m e r e inflation of the type affected by a newly literate audience, is too frequently c r o s s e d . The long shadows of Quintilian and Dr. Johnson still lie heavily on much modern p r o s e . " 9* What has been said above does not mean, however, that all sentences and supraphrasal unities can be neatly classified into the three types of syntactic s t r u c t u r e . It is therefore necessary to try and find f u r t h e r c r i t e r i a for classifying sentences according to these three basic types, as well as to look for the c r i t e r i a which would enable us to classify sentences stylistically in other ways. (What we a r e thinking of now, is the prosodic level of linguistic r e s e a r c h . Prosodic analysis can help us in achieving the most p r e c i s e and objective classification of the material. It would also be of great interest and importance to t r a c e the correlations between the syntactic and prosodic structures of sentences and supraphrasal unities.) The prosodic analysis of the three basic types of sentences was c a r r i e d out by Tatjana Sevcenko. 10* She, however, confined herself mainly to one p a r a m e t e r , the p a r a m e t e r of pitch, and, consequently, studied prosodic sequences in t e r m s of pitch contours only. Her analysis gave the following results: For a balanced sentence prosodic parallelism is the most clear-cut and characteristic feature. Prosodic parallelism is manifested in a symmetrical arrangement of pauses and nuclear tones. As a r u l e , n u clear tones fall on the main elements of the antithetic opposition: = But I ^suppose • that if a | man has a "confused /mind, - he will | write in a ^confused ( way, - if his | t e m p e r is /capricious, - h i s | p r o s e will be fan\tastical,- and if he has a (quick 'darting intelligence, - that is re'minded by the »matter in »hand of »thousand /things, - he /will, - u n ' l e s s he has the "great-self-con/trol, • 'load h i s - p a g e s w i t h - m e t a phore and \simile.= (W.S. Maugham)

64 In accordance with the rules of classical rhetoric in periodic sentences subordinate clauses must precede the main clause, while the mutual arrangement of all its parts must be well regulated and rhythmical. Syntactically, the periodic sentence consists of two parts: the protasis and the apodosis; prosodically, its melodic contour consists of anticadence, corresponding to protasis and resulting in a gradually ascending pitch, and cadence, which corresponds to apodosis and r e sults in a gradually descending pitch. Anticadence and cadence are always divided by a prominent pause, which is not infrequently a twounit one: 'Pride is "neither • comic nor •yvenal, «but the 'most «mortal of .all \sins • be / cause, • 'lacking • any • basis in concrete par/ticulars, • it is (both incorrigible and absoMute:=one Icannot be \more or \less .proud, • only Iproud or\humble.1 (W. H. Auden) In contrast with the first two types the loose sentence is not characterized by strict syntactic or prosodic rules of structure. The parts of loose sentences are much less closely interconnected and enjoy a considerable degree of independence. Thus, for instance: iRhythmless • speech or ^writing« is like the I flow of ^liquid • from a (pipe or a\tap; = it 'runs with 'smooth mo'notony • from 'when it is «turned /on« to 'when it is "turned\off,• provided it is 'clear ^stuff; = I if it is /turbid, • the 'smooth • flow is • queerly and ab«ruptly /checked +from. time to-time »and 'then re\sumed. (H. W. Fowler) This sentence could easily be divided into three parts, each of the parts being comparatively independent not only in terms of completeness of purport but also from the point of view of prosody. The prosodic analysis of the three main types of sentences, though thorough and elaborate, has not so far been clearly connected with one of the most important prosodic parameters of the utterance with the parameter of rhythm, of the rhythmical organization of discourse. 11* Although rhythm plays an important role in the prosodic arrangement of the utterance, it has, so far, been almost completely ignored by phoneticians. 12* Before passing to the discussion of the main types of rhythmical o r ganization of sentences we feel bound to dwell upon the principal categories of rhythmical analysis of discourse. We shall begin with the basic category of prose-rhythm, i . e . the category of frazirovka, that i s , the subtler phenomena of sound, such as pauses, tempo, range, e t c . , as used by the individual speaker. The category of frazirovka, as well as the term, belongs to the theory of Soviet linguostylistics. It is, therefore, essential, that we should dwell on both the object and the name - at some length.

65 It is common knowledge that speech is always divided into parts or segments by means of pausation, changes in pitch, etc. If it were not segmentable in this way it could not be properly apprehended. Besides, the fact that utterances vary in length (the difference sometimes being quite considerable) brings up the question of the amount of air in the lungs required to produce an utterance. Hence the p r i mary or natural segmentation or articulation of utterances - the breath-group: »The 'basic requirement for a consistent and re-liable /theory« is a |sound jmetata^xonomy. Utterances, however, are not exercises in phonetics, but first and foremost - units of communication. It is therefore indispensable that the natural (physiologically conditioned) interruption in the flow of speech should occur at the end of sense-groups, that it should serve to bring out the purport of the utterance. Hence the juncture, that is the facultative pause: it depends on the speaker to select a certain junctural pattern. In other words, he can exploit more or less fully the possibilities of pausation which are placed at his disposal by the syntactic laws of the language he is using: =The ibasic re/quirement• for a consistent and reliable/theory« is the •sound metata\xonomy. = =The ibasic r e t i r e m e n t for a con'sistent and re «liable /theory» is the feound metatayconomy. = A sense-group as marked off by a juncture is called a syntagm. 13* It is the way a complex utterance is construed in terms of the latter that is called frazirovka. The syntagm is the principal unit of prose rhythm because it meets the following requirements: (1) It is global, i . e . characterized by the close-knit syntactic unity of its elements: It is 'still |too 'often a/ssumed. that 'names do inot \ m a t t e r , that they are (accidental, ^arbitrary, superficial— and of | little importance* so •long as the I object of/ study. can be 'properly/seen and ^analysed.® (2) It is coterminous with breath-groups, being singled out in the flow of speech by pauses and other prosodic means: /History, as it Hies at the «foot of 'all 'science,— is v also«

66

the ^first dis-tinct/product + of Iman's s p i r i t u a l \ n a t u r e , . the 'earliest e x p r e s s i o n « of 'what may be • called\Thought? (T. Carlyle) (3) A syntagm is reducible to a certain mean length which makes f o r comparability of syntagms: I Headl and after • weathered / headland( 8) • could b e / s e e n ( 3 ) ~ I stretching into/distance(6). beyond the Ibeach of. polished ^pebbles(9)> | edging the • b l u e \ s e a . (5)= (J. Austen) There are different types of rhythmical organisation of sentences from the point of view of their syntagmatic s t r u c t u r e . A sentence or a paragraph can be branded as "monotonous" if the length of its syntagms v a r i e s within a very narrow range: For the 'Celt and t h e \ C o p t , (6)the 'Red • man as well as the\ White(8)« 'lives between*two E t e r n i t i e s , ( 8 ) and | warring against Ob/livion,(8) he would 'fain u'nite him^self^)» in \clear« conscious reflations, (7) — as in |dim 'unconscious re^lations(9)+ he Hs a l r e a d y Uynited, ( 8 ) with the Kvhole/Future(5)> and the ' w h o l e \ P a s t . (3) = (T. Carlyle) A sentence or a paragraph is "rambling" if short and long syntagms alternate in it without any definite regularity: /Wethe \we c o n s i s t i n g of m y . wife and my^self(ll) \ left • Liverpool f o r /Boston(7)o n t h e '24th\August(8)1861,(5). in the A\rabia,(5)~ one of 'Cunard's «North A ' m e r i c a n • mail \packets. (12) = X (A. Trollope) Rhythm in a sentence is "alternating" if long syntagms alternate with short ones m o r e or less regularly: •Poetry is ba^roque.It de'mands /depth find \insight.I 'cannot but |feel-

67 that the Iprose ' w r i t e r s of ba-roque/period* w e r e vpoets« who had |lost their \way.= (W. S. Maugham) A sentence or a passage can be classified as "jerky" if it consists of short equal syntagms: As ^readers, (most of / u s , to ,some d e c r e e , a r e like | t h o s e \ u r c h i n s who |pencil m o u s t a c h e s « on the (faces o f \ g i r l s + in a d v e r t i s e m e n t s . = (W. H. Auden) A sentence p o s s e s s e s a "grading" rhythmical structure if the length of successive syntagms gradually i n c r e a s e s (decreases), so that each next syntagm is longer (shorter) than the previous one: -I do |not 'think« | anyone «writes so ^well that he |cannot «learn «much \ f r o m it. = (W. S. Maugham) The last type to be mentioned is the "enclosing" rhythmical s t r u c t u r e . In this case a sentence begins with several long syntagms followed by several short ones. It ends with long syntagms again, at equal length with the initial ones: The 'interests of a / w r i t e r and the linterests of his ^readers are |never t h e \ s a m e , and /if on o c c a s i o n , they lhappen to jcoiryside,'this is a «lucky N^ccident. = (W. H. Auden) Not all sentences can be neatly classified according to the types listed above. By and large, however, within a longer stretch of discourse it is the predominance of this or that type that is decisive. Now that we have discussed the main types of rhythmical structure of sentences, a very important question a r i s e s : what are the c o r r e lations between them and the syntactic types of sentence structure d i s cussed above? Although no s t r i c t one-to-one correspondence between the two systems of classification was established in the course of our analysis, certain correlations may still be observed. Thus, loose sentences a r e mainly monotonous or rambling in t e r m s of rhythm:

68

Clio(2) was figured by the ancients(7) as the oldest daughter of Memory, (10) and chief of the Muses ;(6) which dignity, (4) whether we regard (5) the essential qualities of her Art, (10) or its practice and acceptance among men, (11) we shall still find (4) to have been fitly bestowed. (7) (T. Carlyle) Rhythmic speech or writing(6) is like waves of the sea, (6) moving onward(4) with alternating r i s e and fall,(8) connected yet separate, (6) like but different, (4) suggestive of some law, (6) too complex of analysis,(8) controlling the relations(7) between wave and wave, (5) waves and sea,(3) phrase and phrase,(3) p h r a s e s and speech. (4) (H. W. Fowler) The periodic sentences (and supraphrasal unities) a r e mainly enclosing and grading ones: That is why,(3) for a d e s e r t island, (6) one would choose a good dictionary(9) r a t h e r than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable,(18) f o r , in relation to its r e a d e r s , ( 9 ) a dictionary is absolutely passive (12) and may legitimately be read(9) in an infinite number of ways. (9) (W. H. Auden) Other rhythmical types of periodic sentence s t r u c t u r e also occur: Let us go on, then, to battle on every front. Thrust forward every man who can be found. Arm and equip the Forces in bountiful supply. Listen to no parley f r o m the enemy. Vie with our valiant Allies to intensify the conflict. Bear with unflinching fortitude whatever evils and blows we may receive. Drive on through the s t o r m , now that it reaches its fury, with the s a m e singleness of purpose

69

and inflexibility of resolve as we showed to the world when we were all alone. (Winston S. Churchill) As for the balanced sentence-structure, there are several rhythmical types that correspond to it, the monotonous being the most often used. Monotony in this case, however, differs in quality from that of the loose sentence. (In the loose sentence rhythm is manifested on the syntagmatic level only, with no "ornaments", no rhythm-constituents whatsoever on other levels, whereas the "would-be" monotony of the balanced sentence is blurred by a number of features which constitute rhythm on other levels, such as syntactic parallelism, lexical repetitions , etc.): It needs taste rather than power, (7) decorum rather than inspiration(lO) and vigour rather than grandeur. (8) (W. S. Maugham) A bad reader is like a bad translator:(ll) he interprets literally(8) when he ought to paraphrase(7) and paraphrases(5) when he ought to interpret literally. (11) (W. H. Auden) An attempt has also been made to analyse the structure of a supraphrasal unity in terms of rhythm. It is often (and wrongly) assumed that the main characteristic feature of scientific prose on the prosodic level is its monotony. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. Before discussing concrete examples of different types of rhythmical organization of discourse we would like to formulate some assumptions of a more general character. If monotonous or jerky sentences dominate in the paragraph, this will undoubtedly result in the general effect of monotony. This, however, is not the worst case possible: we know now that syntagmatic monotony can be "blurred" and "diversified" by the use of different rhythm-constituents on levels other than prosodic. If this is not the case, then, of course, monotony is not the best rhythmical structure to be chosen for scientific discourse, because the listener (or reader) would too soon be reduced to tedium. Besides, he may fail to notice some very important information on the subject if it is "buried" under other information of a supplementary or subservient character. If most of the sentences of the supraphrasal unity are rambling, the general effect upon the ear will be that of too much variety. We have very good reasons to assume that this type of speech (or writing) is not appropriate for scientific discourse either: it is very difficult to follow this type of speech and the listener may soon lose track of the general idea. An extended analysis of rhythm in scientific linguistic papers has proved that the most appropriate type of rhythmical organization of

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this register is that of the properly balanced variety, which is created by alternation of different rhythmical types of sentences. /Phonology« as a 'rapidly developing/science • has Igradually e^volved an im-pressive metalanguage.- It is 'still »too »often as/sumed-that |names do • not \matter,- that they are accidental \ arbitrary, • superficial, • and of | little importance • so \long as the • object of/studyis Iproperly • seen and \analysed.« \Nothing,» ^however, • could be 'further from the \truth. = The |basic re/juirement• for a consistent and reliable /theory»is a | sound metata\xonomy. = Scien'tific -knowledge • cannot be accumu/lated, • |stored and ipassed/On • without a |well-'ordered • system of/terms,-to 'give »shape Jto, -and ex'press its »concepts and \categories.= B e d s i d e s t h e ¡meta'dialects of • different • schools and directions, when com'pared with • each/other-| bring the respective approaches into »greater re/lief-and e'nable the re/searcher- 'better to 'judge of their\merits. =• The paragraph under analysis comprises the following rhythmical sentence structures: the first sentence is a grading one, which is, generally speaking, typical of the initial sentence of the paragraph; the second sentence is enclosing in structure, and followed again by two more grading sentences, while the fifth sentence - which is the climax of the paragraph - realizes the alternating rhythmical structure; only the last sentence is rambling. To prove our assumption it would be helpful to adduce one more paragraph: The di< vision of • Europe • into a I number of inde»pendent/ states, connected, • how'ever, • with | each/other, • by the Igeneral re-semblance of re/ligion, • /language • and ^manners, • is pro'ductive of the • most bene»ficial /consequences • to the |liberty of \mankind. = A 'modern/tyrant,-who should |find• no resistance • 'either in his • own^breast, - lor in his people,-would 'soon ex»perience a »gentle res/traint» from the e'xample of his \ equals,-the | dread of »present \censure, - the ad'vice of his/allies,-and the appre'hension of his \enemies.= The lobject of his dis/pleasure,- es'caping from the \narrow • limits of his doyminionswould leasily ob/tain,-in a I happier ^climate,- a se| cure ^.refuge, - a\ new- fortune* adequate to his /merit, - the | freedom of com^plaint-and perhaps the »means of re\venge. = But the einspire of • Romans • filled the\world, - and when \that em.pire »fell into the »hands of a • single /person, -the I world be»came a |safe and • dreary • prison for his \enemies. 2 The I slave of Im,perial /despotism, - whether he was condemned to |drag his . gilded. chain in |Rome and the /senate, - o r to 'wear »out a »life of /exile »on the |barren»rock of /Seriphus, - or the | frozen «banks of the /Danube,- ex'pected his • fate in• silent de\spair. = To re'sist was\fatal, - and it was im'possible to^fly. = On 'every/side »he was en'compassed with a» vast ex»tent of. sea and /land, -which he could I never «hope to /traverse-without being dis/covered,» ^seized,» and

71 res'tored to his • irritated\master. = Beyond the/frontiers, • his anxious • view could discover \nothing, - except the ^ocean, - i n hospitable /deserts,-hosjtile .tribes of bar/barians, • of jfierce • manners and un.known/language, • or de'pendent\kings,~ who would I gladly, purchase the* emperor's prO/tection«by the (sacrifice of an obnoxious fugitive.»"Where 1 ever you\are", -said I Cicero to the •exiled Mar^cellus,- "re'member that you are 'equally within the • power of the\conqueror". » (Edward Gibbon) 1

If we analyse the paragraph in terms of the parameters discussed above, we shall see that though being quite an extensive one, the paragraph contains a very small number of monotonous and rambling sentences. Most of the sentences of the paragraph possess clear-cut and elaborate rhythmical structures. NOTES 1* Simeon Potter, "Our Language", Penguine Books, 1957. 2* Simeon Potter, op. c i t . , p. 95. 3* Simeon Potter, op. cit. , p. 97. 4* Simeon Potter, op. cit. , p. 97. 5* Cf. 'Syntax: Theory and Method', ed. by Olga Akhmanova and GalinaMikael'an. MGU, M . , 1972. 6* One of the aspects of "good" English invariably discussed in manuals on style is choice of words in terms of length and complexity. Cf., for instance, Olga Akhmanova and Rolandas F. Idselis, "What is the English We Use?" M. , MGU, 1973, pp. 67-70. 7* Alan Warner, A Short Guide to English Style, London, Oxford University Press, 1961, p. 13. 8* Ian A. Gordon, op. c i t . , p. 154f. 9* Ian A. Gordon, op. c i t . , p. 157. 10* Tatjana Sevcenko, "The Prosody of Major Syntax", in: Linguostylistics: Theory and Method, ed. by Olga Akhmanova, M . , MGU, 1972. 11* By rhythm we mean "the regular alternation of acceleration and slowing down, of intensification and relaxation, of length and brevity, of similar and dissimilar elements within the speech event" (Olga Akhmanova, Slovar' lingvisticeskix Terminov, 2nd ed., M . , Sovetskaja Enciklopedija, 1969, p. 388). 12* We do not mean to say that the concept of rhythm has never been mentioned at all; it is not unknown to the students of syntactic phonetics. Nevertheless, its actual importance, its scope and applicability have not, so far, been fully appreciated. 13* By "syntagm" we mean "the result of a given frazirovka, the smallest meaningful part of the utterance singled out of the flow of speech by prosodic means" (Olga Akhmanova, Slovar' lingvisticeskix terminov, p. 408).

PART IV THE LINGUOSTYLISTICS O F CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

1

THE SEMANTIC ASPECT

This part of the manual consists of two separate chapters. Although the general title is "The Linguostylistics of Cross-Cultural Communication", we must begin by showing what the underlying situation on the semantic level i s , because the study of style (although concerned with the metasemiotic level) could not exist if it were not firmly based on the semantic level of analysis. If we a r e to begin with an investigation of what actually happens when people speak, we shall have to claim that using language would be impossible if the speakers were not convinced that they have mastered the semiotic system they a r e using. Obviously the reason why so few foreign language l e a r n e r s can really use foreign languages in speech and writing is their uncertainty, is the fact that they do not feel as if they have mastered the semiotic system in question. Most people never overcome this feeling of uncertainty and fear and never really learn to speak any language save their own. The typical p a r r o t linguists who easily m a s t e r quite different languages are those people who have succeeded in overcoming what we have described as "a f e e l ing of uncertainty and f e a r " . The German word "Hemmung" was very appropriately used to describe the psychological state of the u s e r of a foreign language, and there can be no doubt whatsoever that unless the "Hemmung" is overcome, i . e . unless the speaker has succeeded in freeing himself f r o m the "shackles" of the "Hemmung" - the f e e l ing of being "held", prevented by the lack of m a s t e r y of the semiotic system he (or she) is supposed or should be supposed to use in c o m munication - he (or she) never gets anywhere. Communication would be quite impossible if all people kept consulting dictionaries and asking themselves linguistic questions instead of communicating. The number of linguists or even philologists is c o m paratively small as compared with the r e s t of humanity. The latter while producing things, working in the industry, e t c . , have to communicate with each other. But naturally they could not c o m municate if they felt doubtful about their own performance even a considerable part of the time. Thus the general or basic principle of all linguistic performance is the above claimed conviction that the speaker, when using his own language, cannot naturally regard himself a s not being in full command of the particular system. The p r e s u m p tion of full m a s t e r y of a certain language as one of the natural, o r ganic (samobytnyx) semiological systems is the basic principle. This point is one of the absolutely most important points which the layman often fails to understand. This brings us to the problem of "Norm and Deviation" (see Appen-

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dix, ch. 1). The problem of the "norm" for a literary language is one of the most controversial problems in modern linguistics. 1* In this chapter the question of the "norm" as well as some other questions connected with it were presented in their traditional form. But in the present context they are hardly adequate, because the basic premise for this part of the book is a very definite and clear explanation of the general principle: irrespective of the highly specialized questions of foreign language learning, cross-cultural communication, etc., every speaker of his own native language is quite sure that he has a perfect command of his native language, and that all other forms of his native language are deviations from the only proper and correct form, the form he himself habitually uses. We may add, of course, that if a person has attained a very high degree of linguistic sophistication, he may, as it were, rise above that primitive attitude. He may be expected to stand, as it were, on one side and start wondering whether what he said was correct. But even linguists most of the time are far from this wonderful level of achievement. Even they have their own biases, their own ideas - hence quite often fruitless discussions of what is the "correct" or "grammatical" way of saying this or that. The interesting thing is that even the educated person, i . e . the person of moderate linguistic sophistication finds it extremely difficult to emancipate himself from preconceived ideas, from the habits he has, as it were, in his bones. To sum up: we are not trying to say that people should not bother about the "norm"; all civilized societies must have (and do have) bodies of learned people who are trying to do something about normalizing first of all orthoepy, orthography, morphology, even syntax, and, of course, they have to go on doing it, because if they were to stop this work, complete anarchy would prevail and mutual intelligibility would be jeopardised. 2* What, then, is "foreign-language" knowledge as distinct from the "vernacular" one? Or, rather, is there any difference between poor linguistic performance by a person who knows no other language (and who is a poor speaker and, especially, writer, because he or she is illiterate or semi-literate, has no education and is generally undeveloped) and by somebody whose knowledge and mastery of a different language (beside his vernacular) is more or less complete? It is usually believed that in this case the vernacular system cannot fail to affect performance in the "new" or "second" or foreign language. Hence the problem of "linguistic interference" and, above all, that of teaching a foreigner to speak and write "properly". 3* This question may be asked with reference to all languages. It acquires especial significance for English because of its great importance as a means of international communication. As far as we know, one of the world's greatest linguists, Henry Sweet, was the first to try and present the problem. In his famous "The Practical Study of Languages" he remarks: "Foreigners' English often presents the curious spectacle of a language constructed on strict grammatical principles, but with hardly a single genuinely English sentence in it. " 4*

77 Henry Sweet never confined himself to m e r e general statements or sweeping theoretical disquisitions. He was a Linguist in the proper sense of the word, and always thought in t e r m s of linguistic facts. 5* He was dealing with natural human languages and always turned to the actual manifestations of the latter in the exposition of his very original and brilliant views. The material he chose to prove the point is a lengthy passage f r o m the distinguished French Orientalist Prof. T e r r i e n de la Couperie (The Pre-Chinese Languages, ch. 235). In this passage the Oriental scholar " . . . is protesting against the s y s tematic study of phonetics". 6* Although the passage is very well chosen, we shall only reproduce the f i r s t paragraph in full and just pick out a few words from the r e s t to s e r v e as material for a subsequent part of this chapter: "Another point which requires due consideration is that of pronunciation. The scientific achievements lately obtained in perfection of transcription by several English and German scholars go beyond human looseness. They have reached the high level of the respective idiosyncrasies of the speaker and of the t r a n s c r i b e r , above the c o m mon average of speech. The activity of m a n ' s speaking-organs and also that of his e a r - s e n s e , have nowhere the mechanical and p e r manent precision which their principles and those of the new school of g r a m m a r i a n s imply. Uncultured populations and uneducated men a r e not naturally bent in the material of their speech to the yoke of steady precision which is only the result of a training in educated social surroundings through several generations. Audition and a r ticulation of language, except in the higher r a c e s , seldom a r r i v e together at some sort of perfection in their effectiveness. F o r i n stance, we may quote the well-known fact that the acuity of the e a r among the r a c e s paying peculiar attention to the colour and pitch of the vowels exists only at the expense of precision in the a r t i c u lation." 7* Unfortunately Henry Sweet had not deemed it necessary to undertake an exhaustive analysis of this manifestation of "arithmetical fallacy" 8* - the tendency " . . . to exclude the really natural and idiomatic combinations, which cannot be formed a p r i o r i , and to produce insipid, colourless combinations, which do not stamp themselves on the memory, many of which, indeed, could hardly occur in real l i f e . . . " 9* ¡The reason, probably, lies in his implicit belief in the all-powerful "directmethod", up-to-date phonetics and oral exercises. At the turn of the century the then new ideas on foreign language learning loomed so large that merely accepting them, merely adopting the freshly discovered categories - language vs. speech, g r a m m a r vs. vocabulary, letters vs. sounds, etc. , seemed to hold such a wonderful promise of a lasting, even final solution that there was really no room f o r preoccupation with "texts" of any kind. Quite recently Olga Akhmanova presented this age-long problem the

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modern way. In "What is the English We Use" 10* she draws attention to the fact that English is extensively used nowadays not only f o r i n tranational but also for international communication. Hence the p r o b lem of selection, of choosing the variety to be used by f o r e i g n e r s , especially "linguisticians" whose profession is to train Anglists: " . . . The different kinds or varieties of English have long been known as "British", "American", "Australian", "Canadian", e t c . , and, m o r e recently, as "West African", "Indian" - even "Scandinavian" or "German". Of these only the American variant was at one time proudly and romantically described as a separate "language": the lower we go down the scale, the m o r e preposterous the t e r m becomes. The t e r m "dialect" would suggest the existence of a m o r e acceptable form of the language and is therefore inapplicable to "British" or "American" English. It is therefore quite natural that the difference should be specified as "accent", for this is the only peculiarity of the different kinds of English that i m m e d i ately strikes the e y e . " 11* But "accent" even when properly selected is by no means the whole problem: " . . . Even in its oral f o r m , speech implies choice and combination of words, their arrangement into sentences and supraphrasal unities. In writing the niceties of enunciation do not figure at all. What, then, is the English we u s e when we w r i t e ? Or r a t h e r , what is the English we use in intellective international communication, predominantly in its written form ? Are there any varieties to choose f r o m ? If so, are they "national" o n e s ? T e r r i t o r i a l and historical, or functional and synchronic ?" 12* Olga Akhmanova thinks that the reason why the problem looms so large now is disregard for the realities of speech: " . . . The "linguistics of speech" - la linguistique de la parole has been neglected too long f o r a consistent metalanguage to be available in discussion of linguistic performance: it is hard to state in so many words what it is that makes a particular sentence sound "un-English". Perhaps the only way to try and make the point is to adduce a few examples of word-combination and sentence-construction. . . " 13* If one w e r e to scan the literature at large one would find many s t a t e ments, which b e a r on the same question: how does one learn to use a foreign language ? What is wrong with the existing methods and approaches ? Can a generally acceptable way out be finally discovered? 14* With the present-day "information explosion" one can never be quite s u r e one has not missed something important. By and large, however, it is mainly general statements, m o r e or less theoretical pronouncements on the subject that one comes a c r o s s . Thus:

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" . . . Foreigners learning another language from books often b e come quite fluent - they acquire a service of words which is not speech. They have not learnt the habitual "economy" of the native in social situations, and their sentences a r e often much too long, too complete, sometimes too grammatical. And they cause a m u s e ment by using strange words equated in the dictionary with the right ones, but not socially operative, and therefore having a ludicrous "meaning" to the native. Pedants often improve their speech in s i m i l a r ludicrous ways. . . " 15* All these very interesting m a t e r i a l s will have served our main p u r pose: the problem stands out clearly enough. But they have also been used to imply that no really workable method of investigation has so f a r been discovered. Where do we go, what then do we turn to in search of one ? Let us begin by going back to the title of the present section. At f i r s t sight " c r o s s - c u l t u r a l " should imply the participation of native speakers of the two different languages and, consequently, it could be assumed that a text, produced by the "foreigner" should and could be "corrected" by the "native", with the "analyst" appearing as a kind of "third person", i . e . an unbiassed judge, a completely i m p a r tial and disinterested observer of objective facts. To verify this hypothesis we returned to the material originally a d duced by Henry Sweet and asked a native expert, a highly educated linguist to see if he could do it. He began by taking it up, sentence by sentence: 1. Another point which requires due consideration is that of p r o nunciation.

One m o r e aspect to be considered is pronunciation.

2. The scientific achievements lately obtained by several English and German scholars go beyond human looseness.

The recent scientific achievements by several English and G e r man scholars in perfecting phonetic transcription a r e f a r m o r e p r e c i s e than average usage.

3. They have reached the high level of the respective idiosync r a s i e s of the speaker and of the t r a n s c r i b e r , above the c o m mon average of speech.

They have reached the point where they can transcribe idiosyncratic tendencies of the speaker and of the t r a n s c r i b e r on the level f a r m o r e p r e c i s e than the common average of speech (the common range of variation of speech).

4. The activity of m a n ' s speaking-organs and also that of his e a r - s e n s e , have nowhere the m e chanical and permanent precision which their principles and those of the new school of g r a m m a r i a n s

The activity of human speech o r gans and also that of the e a r e x hibit nowhere the same automatic and constant precision which a r e implied in the principles of these scholars and of those in the new

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Imply.

school of grammarians.

5. Uncultured populations and uneducated men are not naturally bent in the material of their speech to the yoke of steady p r e cision which is only the result of a training in educated social s u r roundings through several generations .

Uncultured populations and uneducated people do not naturally exhibit in their speech the constant precision which is only the result of training over a period of several generations in educated society.

6. Audition and articulation of language, except in the higher races, seldom arrive together at some sort of perfection in their effectiveness.

Except among members of the higher races, the hearing and the speaking of a language seldom r e sult in any degree of perfection in effectiveness.

7. For instance, we may quote the well-known fact that the acuity of the ear among the races paying peculiar attention to the colour and pitch of the vowels exists only at the expense of precision in the articulation.

For example, we may note the well-known fact that a high degree of aural accuracy among races paying special attention to vowel quality and pitch exists only at the expense of loss in preciseness of articulation.

We quoted Olga Akhmanova above as saying that practically the only way of presenting the problem at present is by giving examples. This then is the side by side presentation of her material, i . e . 10 "fallacious" sentences and their "translations into English": 16* 1. We touched three topics during We touched on three subjects the lecture. during the lecture. 2. We examined the degree in which they had assimilated the language.

We tried to establish the degree to which the language had been assimilated.

3. We verified the hypothesis that the language patterns of the a r ticulation and tonation of an individual are definitely fixed in the ages from 5-6 to 13-14.

We tested the hypothesis that an individual's articulation and intonation patterns become fully es tablished between the ages of 5-6 to 13-14.

4. There are many homonyms ob- A considerable number of homostructing communication in nyms in Modern English hinder Modern English. understanding (interfere with communication). 5. The discrimination of homonyms is influenced by the u s e r ' s knowledge.

The discrimination of homonyms reflects the u s e r ' s knowledge of the language.

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6. Few homonyms have no clue of discrimination.

Normally the discrimination of homonyms is made possible by various linguistic means. Few homonyms offer no clue whatsoever.

7. We laid a stress on the meanings and feelings of the words and surveyed the following points through opinionaires.

We concentrated (we were particularly concerned with) the meanings and connotations of words; we checked on the following points by means of opinionaires.

8. In order to achieve clarity and quick orientation of discussion, and in order to make this partial task stand o u t . . .

For clarity and to assist discussion, as well as to bring out this particular point...

9. Construction A is counterposed Construction A is set against conto construction B. struction B. 10. Their names are worthy of memorizing.

Their names deserve to be r e membered.

What does the "analyst" see and what can he say when he has collated the two versions ? Mainly that (1) he admires the "translators' " (the second parties') intelligence, because they appear to have actually understood the "content", the "purport", the underlying "intensions or senses", 17* (2) he is sure their versions are "interpretations" often very free and far removed from the originals, (3) the points in the two versions which can really be "collated" are not so numerous. What, then, are the linguistic (or linguostylistic - as the case may be) observations to be made ? As has already been said above, the present part of the book is divided into two chapters, because different facts of speech should be analyzable from the point of view of cross-cultural communication both as a linguistic and a linguostylistic phenomenon. Although the two are closely connected, they have to be kept apart both methodologically and for practical purposes. The following examples will be used to explain what is meant by "linguistic" problems of international communication. For the original texts above, adduced by Henry Sweet and Olga Akhmanova, the following corrections were suggested: Sentence 1 (a) "another point" should be "one more aspect". Sentence 2 (a) "in perfection of" should be "in perfecting"; not "in perfection of transcription", but "in perfecting transcription". Sentence 3

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(a) "speaking-organs" should be "speech organs". (b) "have" should be "exhibit"; not "the activity of m a n ' s speakingorgans has . . . p r e c i s i o n . . . " , but "the activity of human speech o r gans. . . exhibits . . . p r e c i s i o n . . . " (c) "mechanical and permanent" should be "automatic and constant"; not "mechanical and permanent precision", but "automatic and constant precision". Sentence 4 (a) "the high level o f ' should be "the point where"; not "they have reached the high level o f . . . ", but "they have reached the point where Sentence 5 (a) "uneducated men" should be "uneducated people". (b) . . . are not naturally bent in . . . " should be " . . . do not naturally exhibit . . . " ; not " . . . uneducated men are not naturally bent in the material of their speech . . . " , but " . . . uneducated people do not naturally exhibit in their speech . . . ". (c) "steady precision" should be "constant precision". (d) " . . . through several generations . . . " should be " . . . over a period of several generations.. ." Sentence 6 (a) " . . . a r r i v e together at . . . " should be " . . . result in . . . " . Sentence 7 (a) " . . . f o r i n s t a n c e . . . " should be " . . . f o r example . . . " (b) "quote" should be "note"; not "we may quote the well-known fact that . . . " , but "we may note the well-known fact that . . . " (c) "The acuity of the e a r . . . " should be "Aural accuracy " (d) "peculiar attention" should be "special attention". Next come the sentences from Akhmanova's article: Sentence 1 (a) "touched" should be "touched on"; "topics" should be "subjects"; not "we touched three topics during the lecture", but "we touched on three subjects during the lecture". Sentence 2 (a) " . . . examined the degree in . . . " should be " . . . established the degree to"; not "we examined the degree in which they had a s s i m i lated the language", but "we tried to establish the degree to which the language had been assimilated". Sentence 3 (a) " . . . patterns . . . definitely fixed . . . " should be " . . . patterns . . . fully established . . . " (b) " . . . in the ages f r o m 5-6 to 13-14" should be " . . . between the ages of 5-6 to 13-14".

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Sentence 4 (a) " . . . obstructing communication . . . " should be " . . . hinder u n d e r standing . . . " Sentence 5 (a) " . . . is influenced . . . " should be " . . . reflects . . . " ; not "the d i s crimination of homonyms is influenced by the u s e r ' s knowledge", but "the discrimination of homonyms reflects the u s e r ' s knowledge of the language". Sentence 6 (a) " . . . have . . . " should be " . . . offer . . . " ; not "few homonyms have no clue of discrimination", but "few homonyms offer no clue whatsoever". Sentence 7 (a) " . . . laid a s t r e s s on . . . " should be ". . . concentrated . . . " ; not "we laid a s t r e s s on the meanings . . . of the words . . . ", but "we concentrated on the meanings . . . of the words . . . " . (b) " . . . surveyed . . . " should be " . . . checked on . . . " ; not "we s u r veyed the following points . . . ", but "we checked on the following points . . . " Sentence 9 (a) " . . . is counterposed to . . . " should be " . . . is set against . . ."; not "construction A is counterposed to construction B", but "construction A is set against construction B". Sentence 10 (a) " . . . are worthy of memorizing" should be " . . . deserve to be r e membered"; not "their names are worthy of memorizing", but "their names deserve to be r e m e m b e r e d " . Although it is still not infrequently assumed that the basic or at least main difficulty is in the " g r a m m a r " or "patterns" of the language to be m a s t e r e d (what Henry Sweet so aptly branded as the "arithmetical fallacy"), this is by no means corroborated by the juxtaposition of the material above. Purely grammatical mistakes, wrong choice of "patt e r n s " because of either deceptive similarity or complete d i s s i m i larity between the "target" and the "interfering" languages a r e so few as to be practically negligible (in Sentence 2, p. 81 "in perfection of" instead of "in perfecting"). Although at the moment we will find it extremely difficult to build up a consistent hierarchy, i . e . to arrange our categories in an o r d e r which would display their relative importance, we can still say that the f i r s t and most obvious step in an analysis of this kind is a look at the words as such, words for their own sake, as it w e r e . To return to our material: Wrong Word speaking-organs

Right Word speech organs

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mechanical permanent peculiar men quote high level topics definitely fixed have surveyed counterpose to are worthy rude ( . . . tribes in a rude state of . . . unflinching ( . . . law of regularity) variance ( . . . from analogy) scorn ( . . . the cases . . . scorn) uncouthness (or pronunciation . . . ) unculture

automatic constant special people note point subjects fully established offer checked set against deserve primitive 18* strict variation be amenable to lack of refinement lack of culture

A synoptic arrangement of this kind is convenient and makes for clarity of presentation. It would, however, be premature to think that at least one of the innumerable difficulties is thus finally r e solved. For (1) are we quite sure we can see what the authors really meant ? and (2) are we quite happy about our own proposed choices ? English is so extensively used as a means of all kinds of international communication, so many people are learning it as a foreign language, etc., that instances of misuse are both numerous and varied. 19* A practically inexhaustible source are the papers and compositions of students, from which the following examples are taken (the presumably "wrong" word is marked with an asterisk): The present participle and the verbal noun *assumed one form. The majority of adjectives do not carry any emphatic ^estimation, they are devoid of stylistic colouring. The aim of narration is to *transmit to the reader an exact visual account of the object represented. The scope of her interests is ^limited to these things only. In this paper an attempt is made to *reveal linguistic means the author uses to render his ideas. Analysing both, we can *state the stylistic value of the text. This shows us the author's ^aspiration for generalization. By repeating the same words in their different meanings the poet •prevents monotony. These two modifiers usually * stand in different semantic fields. This is a very * strong and effective linguostylistic device. That is why the word "sea" *attains a symbolic meaning. There is a *bright example of such an analysis. He never *avoids the pleasures of life, but likes to show off his "puritanism".

85 The semantic analysis of nouns *manifests that . . . But certain ^tendencies in the stress distinguish the long lines from the short lines. In the opening lines of the first stanza " a s " ^assumes the meaning "when". 20* We have already said above (p. 75) that the ontological difference lies in the fact that however poor the speaker of a native language may be, he has no "Hemmung": he is absolutely satisfied with his own performance and never questions its excellence. But if we carefully scan the above examples, the question will naturally arise: is there no contradiction with what we said at the beginning of this chapter and what we are assuming now. At the beginning we sounded sceptical as to the possibility of really putting our finger on the absolutely correct way of saying something. Now we sound as if we appeared to assume something completely different, i . e . we sound as if we were criticizing users of a foreign language for something that is just not feasible. But the contradiction is only apparent and does not really exist, because it only proves the validity of what has been said above: no linguistic work can be done in the field of v e r nacular communication or in the more specific field of foreign language teaching or use of foreign languages in international communication, unless it is assumed that there exist people who know the language. In other words, this part of the book is written on the underlying a s sumption that Henry Sweet knew the English language and whatever he said (see above, pp. 76-77) was right. We could go a step further and claim that we cannot possibly do anything at all in the field of English as a means of international communication, unless we take for granted that the supervisor of English studies, even if a foreigner, knows, has mastered, has an adequate command of a kind of English which is quite acceptable or even perfectly suitable for international, educational and other purposes. In other words, linguistic work is completely impossible, unless certain living individuals or writers on the subject can pronounce judgements about the performance of others. There is, therefore, no contradiction whatsoever between what has been said above and what we are saying now, because if we set out to teach somebody English, then there must be the underlying assumption that our knowledge is (in the case of a foreign language) scientifically based, in contrast with the illiterate speaker of the vernacular. We are always c r i t i cal, of course, we consult dictionaries, compare performances, make a scientific subject of it, e t c . , but the basic assumption remains. It has already been mentioned that instances of "faulty English" are grouped together on the as yet unproved assumption that "choice of right word" (or contrariwise, exposing the mistaken choice or use of the wrong word) could be separated from something that is very closely and organically connected with it, i . e . word-combination. Although very much research will still be required before the above approach is vindicated - or, perhaps, disproved - we still think it possible to separate the cases adduced above from the following ones, where attention will be focussed not on the separate elements, but on the assessment of the way words have been brought together within

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certain types of word-combinations, among which the attributive ones come f i r s t . In c a s e s like: "This is the never-tiring d e s i r e of people to educate themselves" we no longer think of the "acceptability" of the adjective "never-tiring" as such, but mainly whether the meaning of the word "never-tiring" is combinable with that of "desire", i . e . whether the combination "never-tiring d e s i r e " is semantically c o r r e c t . There is also nothing the m a t t e r with "periods" or "creating" o r even "many-volumed works" as such in the sentence: "Periods of creating many-volumed works were followed by florescence of poetry and short s t o r i e s " . It is the combination of "periods of creating" and "creating many-volumed works" that must be regarded as unacceptable in t e r m s of word-combination. More examples: "attentive attitude", "low ways of human conduct", "the author's style, intelligence and interpretation of life", "style and intelligence which are intense and distinguished", etc. Next some examples of combinations of the verb + noun or transitive verb + object type: "to grasp the thread of the plot", "to see and take part in h o r r o r s " (horrors they saw and took part in), "Tolstoj's writings give you an everlasting happiness", "to escape the feeling that . . . " , "to feel real life all the time", "to prove one's ideas on the c h a r a c t e r s " , "to enrich one's knowledge of man and his culture", "to bring the composition of the story to light", "to pursue a certain aim", etc. P r o p e r choice of syncategorematic words is not usually regarded as part of "word-combination". What does one do, then, with g r a m m a t i cal deixis, f o r example, the articles as an obligatory form of deictic expression in English? The main point that must be made h e r e is that we have to assume (if we want to compare languages in t e r m s of analytic comparison, i . e . if we compare language not as m e m b e r s of the same family of languages but as different languages irrespective of their "genetic" relationship) the existence of some general underlying fund of purports or meanings which are in principle discoverable in all languages. 21* What i s , then, the relation between the extralingual or notional and grammatical c a t e g o r i e s ? As f a r as the latter are concerned, we may simply r e f e r the r e a d e r to "The Theory of Syntax in Modern Linguist i c s " . 22* The situation with the f o r m e r is infinitely m o r e complex. Although very much has already been said and written on the subject, they still appear to be so elusive that every new trend in linguistics s t a r t s , as it w e r e , a f r e s h . This was the case with I. I. Mescaninov's "pon'atijnyje kategorii", which may be defined, if his different p r o nouncements on the subject are carefully compared, as "the abstract generalized meaning, which finds some sort of expression in a given language or languages" 23* ( e . g . the category of modality, the category of plurality, the category of animateness, etc.). In recent times "kernel sentences", "deep s t r u c t u r e s " , e t c . , would seem to show that the quest for the "universal" underlying something is still in p r o g ress. The main, most important difference between languages consists in the fact that certain things, some of these underlying conceptual enti-

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ties in one language a r e always expressed: it is obligatory, compulsory for the speaker to express them - in this case it is g r a m m a r , 24* while the same thing in another language may be expressed or not according to the wish of the speaker. Thus in English one cannot "substantivize" anything, i . e . present any thing-meant as a noun without at the same time categorizing it deictically. In Russian the speaker may categorize it in the same way if he wants by using different s y n tactic s t r u c t u r e s , w o r d - o r d e r , changing the functional s e n t e n c e - p e r spective, etc. But if he does not, nobody minds, for he does not have to. Here a r e some examples of typical mistakes, caused by " i n t e r f e r e n c e " of Russian, which has no articles and expresses the deictic relationship by lexical or syntactical means: 25* A change in the established o r d e r of words in a sentence f i r s t of all concerns . . . object. The image of the sun is one of . . . central images in the poem. Another stylistic device of Dylan Thomas', which is closely connected with the above mentioned ones is the deformation of the set expressions or cliches. This device s e r v e s to form the inner rhyme of the lines, though it is the imperfect rhyme. We have the alliteration of . . . "g" sound in the two stanzas. And really, the elegance and smoothness of the rhythmical flow h e r e , . . . brilliance of certain passages produce a vivid and a p r o found effect. The parallelism as a principal device of the play will be discussed below. Language is connected with thought and with . . . social life of the speech community. Only considering them as closely connected branches can one make the profound analysis of a l i t e r a r y work. Literary t e r m s lack a scientific precision. On the contrary, those who study l i t e r a r y criticism think that it is they who deal with a real science. But she does not want to m a r r y him and before . . . wedding runs away. It may well be asked: why do the students keep making mistakes in the use of articles ? Has it really been one of the most neglected aspects of linguistic training ? This may probably be accounted for by the fact that so f a r articles have been taught unscientifically. By this we mean that in nearly all s c h o o l - g r a m m a r s the approach in this case is purely f o r m a l , i . e . the students a r e given various rules (with numerous e x ceptions) of how, when and what article they must choose. 26* True, some scientific ideas have been expounded, 27* but still too often there is a wide gap between the mentality of the foreign-language teacher with his formal r u l e s , and the linguistician's " s u p e r i o r " and "lofty" approach. So many instances of faulty "foreigners" English were analysed and classified above, because there is something elusive, something i n -

88 tangible in this kind of "linguistic performance", something we have not succeeded in actually "putting our finger on". Henry Sweet was fully aware of the fact and found this kind of writing glaringly objectionable when he reprinted the lengthy passage from the work of an unsuspecting foreign colleague. 28* But even that master-mind of linguistics had failed to explain with his usual perspicacity what it was he disliked so much. Unfortunately things have not changed appreciably since. NOTES 1* The methods of working on the problem of the "norm" have changed in the course of time in accordance with changing linguistic schools, principles and approaches. This is what Daniel Jones thought about the "norm" of pronunciation: " . . . a new attitude has been adopted in regard to the much-discussed question of standard pronunciation. I find that it can no longer be said that any standard exists, nor do I think it desirable to attempt to establish one. It is useful that descriptions of existing pronunciation should be recorded, but I no longer feel disposed to recommend any particular forms of pronunciation or to condemn others. It must, in my view, be left to individuals to decide whether they should speak in the manner that comes to them naturally or whether they should alter their speech in any way." (Daniel Jones, The Pronunciation of English, Cambridge, 1950). See also: O. S. Akhmanova et al., O Principax i Metodax Lingvostilisticeskogo Issledovanija, MGU, M. , 1966, pp. 45-50; 56-58; V. A. Ickovic, "Norma i jejo kodifikacija", Aktual'nyje Problemy Kul'tury Reci, "Nauka", M. , 1970, pp. 9-39; B. S. Svarckopf, "Ocerk razvitija teoreticeskix vzgl'adov na normu v sovetskom jazykoznanii", Aktual'nyje Problemy Kul'tury Reci, p. 369. 2* See Olga Akhmanova, "Some Comments on Social Dialect, Style and Usage", "Philologica Pragensia", 1961, vol. 4, No. 3. O. S. Akhmanova, V. F. Bel'ajev, "Ob osnovnyx pon'atijax "normy reffi" (ortologija)", "Filologiceskije Nauki", M., 1965, No. 4. 3* This problem was the subject of an All-Union Conference in Vilnius in 1971, where it was discussed in detail with reference to all the "levels" of linguistic analysis. (See: Vzaimodeistvije Jazykov v Processe Obucenija, ed. by V. Sernas, Vilnius, 1971.) Also: cf. Carl James, "The exculpation of contrastive linguistics". Papers in Contrastive Linguistics, ed. by Gerhard Nickel, Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. 53-68. We hope to be able to show in what follows that it is mainly a question of an "interfering" world-view, for people do not talk by means of universal words or formulae. 4* Henry Sweet, The Practical Study of Languages, Oxford University Press, London, 1964, p. 71. 5* R. A. Close, "Problems of Future Tense" is quite right when he speaks of Henry Sweet's " . . . monumental wisdom" to which we still " . . . cling when the conflict of modern ideas becomes too bewildering" ("English Language Teaching", vol. XXIV, No. 3, May 1970, p. 225).

89 6* Henry Sweet, op. c i t . , p. 71. 7* Henry Sweet, op. c i t . , pp. 71f. 8* Henry Sweet's term "fallacy" with different attributes - the fallacy of imitation, the fallacy of minute distinctions, etc. - has fallen into disuse. Whatever the fate of the term, the "thing" it was coined to denote, is most flagrantly there to this day. 9* Henry Sweet, op. c i t . , p. 72. 10* Olga Akhmanova, "What is the English We Use", in Brno Studies in English, vol. 8, Brno, 1969, p. 27. See also Olga Akhmanova and Rolandas F. Idzelis, "What is the English We Use", M. , MGU, 1973. 11* Olga Akhmanova, op. cit. , p. 27. 12* Olga Akhmanova, op. c i t . , p. 27. 13* Olga Akhmanova, op. cit. , p. 27. 14* It is fashionable nowadays to attack the old ways of teaching English and to campaign for their replacement by the new ones. It is not our purpose here to weigh the relative merits of teaching methods. A great amount of literature on methods of teaching languages exhibits considerable controversies as to the best way of teaching foreign languages. 15* J . R. Firth, The Tongues of Men and Speech, Oxford University Press, London, 1964, p. 176. 16* They were chosen " . . . out of the millions of instances so lavishly supplied by users of scientific English all over the world (for obvious reasons the sources will remain unnamed)", Olga Akhmanova, op. cit. , p. 27. 17* " . . . The linguistics of speech is by no means the only neglected domain among the numerous disciplines concerned with human communication. Very little is known about the mutual relationship of thought and language - especially in the case of abstract "scientific" thinking. Does one go on thinking in one's native language even when the subject matter is not only general and impersonal, but also one regularly and habitually dealt with in all kinds of linguistic garb ? If so, then the question is best discussed in terms of "translation", for this is the term which most naturally comes to mind when another language, a different semiotic system, is to be substituted for the original o n e . . . If that other "language" is a natural one, does translation always imply travesty, does it always result in something that is not only unlike, but also inferior to the original? . . . What, then, is the English we use? And, above all, what is the English we ought to use? . . . " (Olga Akhmanova, op. cit. , p. 28). " . . . In order to discover the intension of a term it is necessary to examine not its purported extension but its actual or correct extension; e . g . , if one attempts to grasp the intension of the term "cups" and mistakenly takes the extension of the term to include such things as cans and pots, then one will fail to grasp the correct intension... Misuses of words occur. One cannot find out what a word means by examining its actual usage unless one can recognize misuses and deviant uses. But how is one to recognize a misuse? or a deviant u s e ? . . . " (P. Ziff, Semantic Analysis, Ithaca, 1960, p. 70). 18* The last six cases were borrowed from that part of Prof. Terrien de la Couperie's extract which was not reproduced in full (see Henry

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Sweet, op. cit., p. 72). 19* Many books of "Correct Usage", "Correct English", "Good English" provide the foreign learner with a clear guidance on a large number of points of English usage which have been found to cause trouble and to produce persistent mistakes. Usually in books of this type the mistakes are divided into sections (Parts of Speech, Functional Vocabulary, Syntax, etc.), each dealing with a particular type of error. Examples of what the authors think are typical mistakes are followed by correct forms. But many of the authors (L. A. Hill, for example, A Guide to Correct English, London, 1968) note that "the classification has inevitably to be an arbitrary one in many cases, and overlapping is frequent". "In many countries, schoolteachers notoriously spend much time in deciding whether a given mistake in a student's paper should be penalized more severely as a grammatical mistake, or less severely as an unidiomatic or awkward construction. The solution usually has more to do with the details of the particular syllabus than with questions of linguistic principle: what goes against the recommendations of the grammar-book in use is by definition regarded as a grammatical mistake. Such a scholastic procedure often puzzles the detached outsider who has a better mastery of the foreign language than of local grammar-books . . . " (N. E. Enkvist, J . Spencer, M. J . Gregory, Linguistics and Style, Oxford University Press, London, 1964, p. 17). 20* For a discussion of " e r r o r s " in students' papers and compositions see: Janush Arabski, "A Linguistic Analysis of English Composition Errors Made by Polish Students", "Studia Anglica Poznaniensia", vol. 1, 1968, p. 139. L. Duskova, "On Sources of Errors in Foreign Language Learning", IRAL, 1969, VII, I. 21* " . . . Beside, or above, or behind, the syntactic categories which depend on the structure of each language as it is actually found there are some extralingual categories which are independent of the more or less accidental facts of existing languages; they are universal in so far as they are applicable to all languages, though rarely expressed in them in a clear and unmistakable way" (Otto Jespersen, The Philosophy of Grammar, London: Allen and Unwin, 1951, p. 55). 22* Olga Akhmanova and Galina Mikael'an, The Theory of Syntax in Modern Linguistics, Mouton, The Hague, 1969. See also: Roman Jakobson, "Boas' View of Grammatical Meaning", American Anthropologist, 61:5, Part 2, October 1959. 23* Cf. The Dictionary of Linguistic Terms by O. S. Akhmanova, 2nd ed. , M. , "Sovetskaja Enciklopedia", 1969, p. 192. 24* " . . . Grammatical morphology is not interested in how to express this or that meaning in a given language. What it wants to know is what is obligatory, compulsory in a given language, what must be included in every utterance, whether the speaker wants to or not. Every single action ("process") must be classified by the speaker of Russian as either "perfective" or "imperfective", and the appropriate categorial form expressed grammatically. Every time he speaks of an "object" he must decide on the case form, because no noun in Russian is indifferent with respect to the category of case . . . " (Olga Akhmanova,

91 Phonology, Morphonology, Morphology, Mouton, The Hague, 1971, p. 113). 25* See also: Rolandas F. Idzelis, "Syncategorematics and Deixis", in Lexicology: Theory and Method, ed. by Olga Akhmanova, MGU, M . , 1972, Part HI, ch. 2. Id.: "Deiksis v pon'atijnoj tkani neidiomaticfeskoj frazeologii" (Deixis in the Conceptual Texture of Non-Idiomatic Phraseology), in Problemy NeidiomatiSeskoj Frazeologii, O. S. Akhmanova and E. M. Mednikova (eds.), MGU, M . , 1971, p. 127. 26* For a criticism of this approach see: V. I. Eelvys, "K voprosu o teorii i praktike prepodavanija artikl'a v sovremennom anglijskom jazyke", UcPonyje Zapiski (Jaroslavskij gos. ped. institut) RomanoGermanskije Jazyki, vyp. 84, 1971, p. 3. 27* See, for instance, Sayo Yotsukura, The Articles in English: A Structural Analysis of Usage, Mouton, The Hague, 1970. 28* See above, p. 77.

2 THE ME TASE MIOTIC ASPECT

Turning to the linguostylistic aspect of cross-cultural (international) communication we will assume that languages differ both linguistically (i.e. on the semantic level) and stylistically (i.e. on the metasemiotic level). In other words, we postulate the existence of a stylistic difference as well. When we say this we mean, for example, the predominantly substantival character of Russian (as well as of some other Slavic languages) over against the predominantly verbal character of English, which makes translation from the former into the latter so difficult. But why should we regard facts of this kind as something that pertains to style? The reason obviously is that it is quite possible or "acceptable" to use substantival forms in English as well: there is nothing grammatically unacceptable in saying, for instance, "The generalization of specifications and categorizations of particular languages in terms of universal grammar is possible". There is no grammatical reason why so many "of-phrases" should not be lumped together in English, for it is by no means a question of actually breaking the grammar rules as such. Clumsy sequences of "ofphrases" simply "sound un-English" and it follows that the careful student of English as a means of international communication must be made fully aware of this fact. At the same time there is every reason - following R. Quirk's pronouncement in his "The Use of English" 1* - to ask whether the stylistic difference between Russian and English should be observed by all categories of users of English as a means of international communication. Grammar in its simplest and most obvious manifestations is obligatory, must be mastered by all: no categories of users of English should be allowed to completely disregard the basic rules of English grammar (not the niceties or refinements, of course). But when it comes to stylistic differences, the question immediately arises (and that is one of the most important problems not only of linguostylistics, but more generally of English as a means of international communication): in how far different users of English in different scientific-technical fields, for example, should be made aware of the stylistic distinctions or differences. To what extent should they be encouraged or even made to take these distinctions into account when using the language cross-culturally? We spoke of substantival-verbal opposition above. But the point is so subtle and delicate that we shall have to give more examples if we are to bring it out as clearly as possible: it was a deficiency of the first edition of the present book that the two aspects - the linguistic and linguostylistic - were not discussed separately. It was, perhaps, pardonable then, for it was the first attempt of the English De-

93 partment at doing something about English in terms of cross-cultural communication. At that time it was extremely difficult for us to go any further in our refinement of the subject. Now the time is ripe for it, and the broader field of knowledge is "dissected" into its component parts: the linguostylistics of cross-cultural communication is now studied on a wider scale, i . e . as a linguistic problem (see chapter 1) and more specifically, in terms of linguostylistics. This more particular approach involves problems like the above mentioned one. To return to this particular case. Do we insist that all users of English as a means of international communication be fully aware of the predominantly "verbal" character of English over against the "nominal" character of Russian? Do we insist on training the innumerable users of English in such a way as to make them change their style of speaking when they use English? A question of this kind could hardly be answered in isolation: we should first think of other cases which fall in the same category, such as, for instance, "pro-words" in English over against "full repetition" in Russian. When we read a text in English written by a foreigner, we find an almost total absence of "pro-words" as compared with an analogous text authored by a native speaker: thus, e . g . , "and so he did" or "and so they will", etc. The sentence "and so they will" is stylistically quite different from its potential equivalent in Russian, for example, because it cannot be translated literally into this language. In Russian we must needs every time repeat the actual "full words", the words of full meaning which underlie this "pro-word" sentence, the sentence which idiomatically is composed almost entirely of "prowords". Or, for instance, a Russian speaker with "To, sto on sam napisal etu knigu . . . " will naturally produce as its English equivalent "The fact that the man wrote the book himself . . . " . 2* Here again it is by no means a question of faulty grammar. It is quite possible in English to say "the fact that . . . " , but stylistically it would be much more "natural" or "idiomatic" for the Englishman to say "His having done so . . . ", "His having written the book . . . ", e t c . , with gerunds, i . e . manifestations of a categorial form which is "cognitively" alien to the foreign user of the language. Or, for instance, the perfect forms, the subtle interplay of simultaneity and anteriority. To return to our example: "The fact that he has given up tennis . . . " (Cf. To, sto on brosil tenis . . . ) is perfectly correct grammatically and in keeping with "Russian style". There are so many subtleties, but, generally speaking, it is quite obvious that an investigation of the linguostylistic problems of international communication will furnish a large number of situations of this kind. It is also quite clear that these must be c a r e fully distinguished from those aspects of the subject of cross-cultural communication which deal with lexicology, word-combination, etc. (see pp. 83-86). "Style" as we know from Part I is choice, the assumption of an underlying identity: we speak of "style" when we know there is something underneath which can be presented in different forms, all the possible (or admissible) different forms being acceptable on the g r a m matical, lexical, e t c . , levels, as the case may be, but requiring a c a r e ful consideration on the level of style. When talking of "style" as a

94 fact of cross-cultural communication, "choice" in the above meaning is not a question of individual preference. It is a question of comparing two or more languages, of seeing how far the possibilities of "choice" in one of them compares with the same in the other. In other words, it is the problem of how far we can go in trying to understand and explain the difference between the two languages in question on the metasemiotic level as languages, emically, and not etically or in terms of this or that peculiar, particular individual choice. Unless we take great care of these distinctions, we do not know how to deal with different concrete cases. Thus, for example, H. E. Palmer in his well-known "Everyday Sentences in Spoken English" 3* presents the case with his usual clarity and vigour: "When the foreign student of English first comes to England he r e alizes, as perhaps he has never realized before, the difference between possessing a theoretical knowledge of the language and possessing the capacity for using the language in everyday speech . . . " 4* Harold E. Palmer thinks this point to be important enough to warrant a concrete example: " . . . A few days after his arrival, the foreign student finds it necessary to fix up an appointment with somebody, and so he racks his memory to find a few words which seem to him appropriate to the occasion; he strings these together and says: "To-day in the evening you are occupied, yes ? " . . . He succeeds in making himself understood, and makes a mental note of the fact that his sentence was intelligible. A few days later he finds himself in a similar situation, and has recourse to the same sentence. On this occasion he produces it with less effort; and after three or more repetitions he has perfectly memorized this atrocious specimen of pidgin-English. " 5* Palmer's ideas on the subject are so interesting and so well expressed that one feels justified in reproducing them in full: " . . . For the last twenty years", says Palmer, "I have been correcting the compositions of foreign students of English, and noting (sometimes with amusement, sometimes with amazement) the r e sults of this assumption. But while fully recognizing the existence of "idioms" he will still assume that the vast bulk of English sentences (including those used in everyday speech) are more or less literal equivalents of his own. The student forms sentences in his own language and translates them into English and, provided there are no serious mistakes in grammar or vocabulary, sees no reason, why the resultant sentences should not be perfect." 6* He always sets great store by concrete examples. Thus, for instance, he asked his students to imagine themselves in a given situation:

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" . . . Imagine, for instance, that having made an appointment with somebody, you arrive ten minutes late. Now write down a few of the things which you might say in such circumstances. In the great majority of cases the students write sentences which no English-speak ing person would ever use. (Examples: Excuse me that I arrive too late. I regret that I have made you wait. Will you please forgive my latecoming. I think that you expect me since ten minutes.) And yet in many c a s e s , there are no actual violations of English Grammar. I then say: "You have invented these sentences. You have either translated them or have evolved them out of your inner consciousness . You have strung a lot of words together in the hope that the sentences will be intelligible. But you have not asked yourselves whether these are sentences which you have actually heard fall from the lips of native speakers. In this way he hopes to achieve satisfactory results: " . . . Sooner or later", writes Palmer, "the foreign student begins to realize that genuine English sentences cannot be evolved out of his inner consciousness, and that the process of translation from his mother-tongue rarely produces anything but "broken" English ( i . e . any dialect of English which is used exclusively by foreigners). He discovers in short, that nine-tenths of English speech is "idiomatic". He concludes, and rightly, that he must adopt an entirely different plan; that he must observe exactly what English people do actually say; that he must make mental or written notes and then, on the first suitable occasion, use these identical expressions himself. From this moment onwards his speech begins to improve. " 7*

The trouble with these extremely interesting remarks, as everywhere else, is that the different categories were never kept clearly apart. Harold E. Palmer, a talented teacher of languages, was not in possession of the necessary taxonomic divisions to understand and e x plain to his pupils what it was he was talking about, when he claimed that there was one and only one perfectly "idiomatic" way of verbally reacting to different situations. It was more like an appeal to the m i r acle of English, as it were, the wonder of "idiom", etc. "To-day in the evening you are occupied, yes ?" is what the foreigner was alleged to come up with. With his extremely fine ear and his perfect feeling for the language, Harold E. Palmer was sure it was wrong somehow. His general idea was that there is very little sense in foreigners l a boriously making up or synthetizing those clumsy sentences instead of doing the idiomatically perfect English thing. In this case instead of producing the "idiomatically" unacceptable "To-day in the evening you are occupied, y e s ? " the foreigner was simply supposed to m e m orize the faultless one which, according to Palmer, was: "Do you happen to be free this evening?". Theoretically speaking this is a very sound idea indeed, but not really practicable unless you can put your finger on it in terms of linguistic categories. When Palmer spoke of these things, did he

96 really hope that all mankind, all the thousands of people who u s e English as a means of international communication would actually learn to say "Do you happen to be f r e e this evening?" etc. with a perfect pronunciation and intonation in the most elegant way ? Certainly that is Utopia, it cannot be done and, most important, should everybody strive to achieve this level of excellence, should all u s e r s of English as a means of international communication actually aim at it? (Always excepting, of course, the linguistic scientists, anglicists especially, who would be expected to meet the most wide-ranging and stringent requirements.) Cross-cultural communication belongs primarily to the domain of cultural anthropology or ethnography. This means that none of the above problems can be solved unless the actual state of affairs is taken into account. Thus, for instance, if it is realized that with the exception of linguistic congresses, or more generally " a r t s " , all congresses use only English as their official language, much of what Randolph Quirk was quoted as saying (see 1* on page 50) will have to be unconditionally accepted. Obviously, in the case of physicists, chemists, e t c . , nobody bothers to be perfectly "idiomatic". Most of these people will simply refuse to be bothered with "Do you happen to be f r e e this evening?" But there is m o r e than that: most people of this category will even find it m o r e difficult to understand highly idiomatic English expressions than the m o r e explicit, non-idiomatic ones. This aspect of the problem has never been sufficiently attended to. We have kept talking about "performance", of what a person says, but it must be understood that using language is always a two-sided a f f a i r . When we speak of different types of English, Russian, e t c . , f r o m the point of view of the speaker (of what a person says) we, of c o u r s e , always presuppose the convenience of the listener: we must always r e m e m b e r that the choice of certain kinds of English for this or that s i t u ation should be conditioned, should be based on both what the speaker can achieve in t e r m s of "performance" and at the same time on what the listener or r e a d e r can apprehend. This aspect of the problem has not been discussed anywhere above. The point we a r e making h e r e in preliminary fashion has to be studied in detail before it becomes anything like a scientific statement. But taking into consideration what Randolph Quirk said about it, taking into consideration the experience of various scientific congresses ( i . e . congresses where English is used as a means of international communication for physicists, chemists, e t c . ) , it should be remembered that highly idiomatic, very well formed sentences which are stylistically faultless, would in a sense be unacceptable for this particular kind of communication: for people whose knowledge of English is very limited, confined to communication narrowly within the limits of their special subject, to use "idiomatic" English would not be a virtue at all; it would be more of the character of deficiency, which people should avoid. This is certainly one of the basic practical questions which will have to be studied and solved in connection with the c r o s s - c u l t u r a l approach to style, i . e . of style in connection with c r o s s - c u l t u r a l communication. When representatives of different cultures meet (not experts in English, not linguists or philologists), i . e . when English becomes a kind

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of Esperanto, then it is no longer a question of linguistics or linguostylistics, but a question of interlinguistics: 8* all stylistic r e f i n e ments will simply have to be abandoned. "The simpler the better" ( i . e . the m o r e non-idiomatic the better, the m o r e logically pedantically simple and concrete the better) becomes the order of the day. The question may well be asked: and what about the great variety of books on "English Style" ? Do not they offer us a conclusive a n s w e r ? Unfortunately in most c a s e s , when we turn to analyses of discourse, we find that our problem somehow escapes the analyst. Let us turn, by way of illustration, to some of the examples collected in Alan W a r n e r ' s excellent book. 9* The f i r s t extract is an official letter written by the director of a government department: "In the absence of legislation designed to regulate the u s e of r e f e r ence books now being issued to Native women, it would be p r e m a ture at this stage to p r e s c r i b e the endorsements or entries which may be made in such books and consequently it is felt that any e x planations or clarifications to be made to Native women should be held in abeyance until the Department has finalized the regulations incidental t h e r e t o . " 10* According to Warner, "this might be expressed as follows: Although we a r e now issuing reference books to Native women, we have not yet decided upon the regulations governing the use of these books. We regret therefore that it is not yet possible to explain the books and advise Native women how to use them. " 1 1 * Next comes a passage from a newspaper: "South Africa has acceded to an agreement on the principles having r e f e r e n c e to the continuance of the co-ordinated control of sea t r a n s port for commercial purposes". "It is not easy to make sense of this", says Warner, "but I think it means, in clean English: "South Africa has agreed to continue control of merchant shipping." 12* Even p r o f e s s o r s do not always write "clean" English. Here is an e x t r a c t f r o m an academic report, followed by its translation into "proper" English: "Subject to the above considerations, and while the large c l a s s e s at present in existence must necessarily lead to an undesirable f o r malization of contact between staff and students, the fixation of a quota is not at present d e s i r a b l e . " "Classes are too large at present, and so the relations between staff and students become undesirably f o r m a l . All the s a m e , it would be unwise to fix a quota for each c l a s s . " 13*

98

When the three instances of "bad" English (English that is not "clean" in W a r n e r ' s terms) a r e carefully compared with the "bad" or u n a c ceptable performance of the Foreigner, it becomes obvious that the deficiencies of the two kinds of "bad" English - the Native Speaker's and the Foreigner's - are categorially different, i . e . they must be "categorized" in altogether different ways. With the Native w r i t e r s it is mainly a question of loose thinking, of inability to " m a r s h a l " their thoughts, to avoid cliches, predilection towards either unnecessarily lofty or "low" words and expressions, etc. 14* In the case of the Foreigner - the advanced foreign student - it is the influence of his native vernacular, the influence of the peculiar style of his native language. On a lower level - in the case of the less advanced student - it is insufficient knowledge, unawareness of "idiom" and "usage" (see Henry Sweet above, pp. 76-77). Although it is not always very easy to keep the two clearly apart, the general principle r e m a i n s . 15* There a r e very few examples of f o r e i g n e r ' s English in books on style and composition. The following, however, appears to be one: "Either they saw me through their normal sense of sight or they d e tected me by means of their noses. " 16* The sentence is "ungrammatical" in the sense that one does not "see through" in the sense of "with", nor does one "detect" somebody "by means of something". But it is also wrong in a more subtle or "stylistic" sense: the general layout of the sentence is out of keeping with what is sometimes d e scribed as the "Spirit" of the language. It is too long, too pedantic, too "circumspect". The opening paragraph from another example - "A Letter from Burma": 17* "Already it becomes very hot h e r e . In the t r e e s the Hot Weather Bird calls and calls, like one heralding a d i s a s t e r . Flying foxes hang head downwards in bunches in the t r e e s around the courts, and the smell of them reaches into our office, so rank it is. All the world is now eating mangoes and throwing away the stones so that the ground is littered with them, and after the mangoes come many flies, and a f t e r the flies the cholera, which rages h e r e every season without any failing." Warner is quite right when he says that " . . . the writing h e r e is simple and concrete". But one wonders what exactly he means when he says that "in spite of some small faults of English . . . as a whole it is clean . . . English". 17* Only excessive lenience towards the poor Foreigner struggling with the Language could account f o r the fact that only three slight imperfections a r e listed in W a r n e r ' s comment. 18* As a m a t t e r of fact almost the whole is somehow different, not "English" in the proper sense of the word. There is no room h e r e for an exhaustive overall analysis of the m a t e r i a l . We shall have to confine ourselves to a few "questions", numbered according to the sequence of the sentences:

99

(1) "become" or "is getting"? (2) Do birds "call" ? Does one "herald a disaster" or only something pleasant, like "Spring", for example. (3) Does he mean "court-yards" or "spaces marked out for certain games" ? (4) How can "all the world" be eating mangoes ? The "ground" could be "littered" with "odds and ends, bits of paper, discarded wrappings, etc.", but surely not with "stones" of any kind. In what sense do "flies come after the mangoes"? Does he mean that the mango-stones on garbage-heaps breed flies which, in their turn, spread the disease? Is the "to rage" used metaphorically in the present: "Cholera rages here every season" ? (Cf. Cholera raged throughout the town). All these remarks completely miss the point. They are, all of them, instances of what was explained above (pp. 81-84) as "linguistic" problems : people write badly because they do not understand or know the words sufficiently well. As has already been mentioned in Chapter 1 (p. 76) consistent overall "normalization" of usage has been confined to pronunciation and spelling whereas lexical, syntactical, and especially stylistic "orthoepy" still remains if not entirely unexplored, at any rate, not presented in orderly fashion to the practical user of language. When Olga Akhmanova and V. V. Veselitsky 19* undertook a detailed investigation of all the entries in Fowler's dictionary of modern usage, they found that the choice of items included in that valuable manual was predominantly empiric. After an attempt at "categorization" the authors summed up the results of their investigation by suggesting the following three categories: (1) synonymic variation, (2) correlation of components, and (3) "secondary reaction" to language which, they think, covers all the entries. The following general conclusion is very important: " . . . All these", writes Akhmanova, "(i.e. euphemisms, onomasiological and "elegant" variation, novelty-hunting, pomposities and superfluous words, incompatibilities, incongruous vocabulary, repetition of words, etc., didacticism, fetishes, over-zeal, pride of knowledge, etc.) "categorize" what the user of language should avoid, what he should not say or write. But the "non-vernacular" user needs positive knowledge, he wants and tries "to do the trick", and usually fails. How much (or how far) he is short of his aim he can only a s s e s s indirectly, because he is easily made conscious of the despicable effect of the non-vernacular users of his own language . . . " 20* The different styles of speech are marked not only by the choice of different words, different syntactic arrangement, different kinds of word-combination, etc., but also by various " . . . vocal effects which can be shown to be used systematically and conventionally by a community in order to communicate a specific meaning..." 21* But even Crystal in his interesting article, which gives an almost complete

100 list of all imaginable semiotic devices, says nothing about the semiological value of a special category of "esoteric" sounds signifying hesitation. As phonetics or phenomena of sound, in the plainest sense of the word, they are: (1) Brief pause: (?>a (n) Example: We can speak about(a) that airplane. (2) Unit voiced pause: (?)3:(o) Example: Perhaps by academic he just means a poet who maintains the forms (so the accepted forms of poetry. (3) Mixed pause: o>a) Example: (o:-ai This definition can be r e garded as a very useful one. From the phonological point of view, i . e . semiologically they denote: (1) Forgetfulness. Example: The chap, addressing it to me, introduced it with these words, and (so Binyon seems to me a good example of an academic poet. (2) Uncertainty. Example: This is really quite interesting because I think that (a) we always have the idea that the academic is the most personal. (3) Attracting attention (as, for instance, in the case of a lecturer or an actor, e t c . , wishing to impress his audience). Example:(3;-3) This definition can be regarded as a very useful one. But what is the actual situation in so far as "style" is concerned? Do the different realisations of these parasitic phenomena of sound at all depend on the situation, type of speech, class, and last but not least, nationality ? Speaking in a very general way we can state that there is a palpable_ difference between English and Russian conversational speech in so far as hesitation phenomena are concerned. Even the simplest form of auditory analysis has shown that hesitation is more frequent in English than in Russian. 22* It is not easy to draw a distinct line between descriptive and p r e scriptive linguostylistics as far as the foreign user of English is concerned. From the point of view of the latter, extensive use of hesitation phenomena in speech should not be encouraged. In other words, people should not be allowed to affect casualness, carelessness, even informality, unless especially called for by the situation. In the case of forgetfulness, it is more advisable to use voiceless pauses in the function of hesitation phenomena. We could have stopped here in so far as the semiological value of hesitation phenomena is concerned. But obviously, this would not be the right thing to do, because there is one more aspect of this problem which should be taken care of: we are thinking of what might be described as nonce-words. It is common knowledge that some words are formed to denote a new object or concept. But sometimes a new word is produced by one speaker only, in some special situation. Having been created once for a particular purpose such a nonce-word may never occur again.

101 Nonce-words have so far been discussed mainly in connection with derivation-patterns and their productivity, the material being usually confined to the orthographic versions of the relevant units. We, on our part, are convinced that all linguistic studies should be based on the main, or primary form of language - its sound form. When studied within the actual speech contours or, more generally, speech-events in which they occur, nonce-words present a very interesting picture and are of especial importance to the student of lexicological phonetics. 23* Thus, for example, an adjective like "public school-ish", or "newspapery", or "dog-in-the-mangerish" as such taken in isolation presents no special problems: just a nonceword constructed according to an absolutely productive pattern. But when considered as part of the following context it acquires considerable scientific interest: (1) = We would 'naturally re'fuse to be\hearty and (*)-spublic schoolish.« (2)= 'Murder is so\(»: )NEWSPAPERY.| It doesn't happen to you. You read a/bout it in a paper. (3) I am sorry to have disobeyed, but why are you so persistent a/bout not wanting me to play a little ? You are W f u l l y (d:- » ) * dogin -the -^n ange rish. In the first example the word "public school-ish" is coined by the speaker to satisfy his desire to be original, to impress his listeners. A brief pause before the word in question plays a very important role because it helps to concentrate the listener's attention on an unusual adjective. The main function of the word "newspapery" is to express a certain evaluative-emotional "content". The unit voiced pause draws the listener's attention to the unusual form of the utterance, thus to enhance the intention to produce a particular stylistic effect. In the third example the last sentence is pronounced with a mixed pause before the word under consideration. 24* The actual functioning of nonce-words is firmly based on the realization of different types of pauses, therefore a discussion of the latter would not be complete without at least a brief mention of the subject. Although the number of examples could be multiplied indefinitely, we may assume that the main principle has been made sufficiently clear even with the adduced half-dozen examples. We shall conclude by stating that pauses must be considered as part and parcel of the expression-plane of nonce-words. Although the two levels - the semantic and the metasemiotic ones are basically different, they are always there at the same time. One more basic mistake which has interfered so much with linguistic r e search has been the theory of levels, which as the "theory of linguistic stratification" has reached a point where the linguists' efforts are directed mainly at separating the different levels or strata from each other as carefully as possible. Now this has been proved to be a mistake. A certain amount of separation between the levels is necessary:

102 one cannot study an object scientifically unless one takes a "scalpel", cuts it into pieces, and puts it under the microscope bit by bit. But linguistics is a social science and language is a particular kind of social phenomenon. The number of factors which operate s i m u l taneously whenever speech is produced is infinitely great and varied. Historically, now is the time when linguistics must revert to the global approach and regard the speech event as a global whole. We shall not go f a r unless we understand that there is always a give-andtake between the semantic and the metasemiotic levels. That this is the case can be shown by turning to the problem of word-combination. It has been assumed that the chemical t e r m "valency" can be applied to words, because there are certain lexical-phraseological constraints or s t r i c t u r e s which either permit or ban the combination of such and such words. But this could only be true if the semantic level were separated f r o m the metasemiotic one by distinct lines of demarcation. In actual fact this is simply not t r u e . If we take, for instance, " P u s kinskij Slovar' " , we shall be surprised to find that what was assumed to be "objective", "scientific" truth falls to the ground, because P u s kin combined words in the most unthinkable way and with enormous s u c c e s s . Some examples from English literature. In an authentic English text (this time not in the work of a student) we find a large numb e r of examples which will help us to bring out the point m o r e clearly. Good speakers of English use words in "combinations" which a r e not clearly prescribed by dictionaries or not prescribed or recommended by them at all. Sometimes the whole of the effect produced by this or that piece of literature is based on the originality with which the author uses and combines words. Thus, f o r instance, the word "bosomy" 25* - a comparatively recent formation or a "neologism" - was found to be used in most unexpected combinations: we find it in combination not only with " w a i t r e s s " - "a bosomy w a i t r e s s " , f o r example, but also with "metaphor" - "a bosomy metaphor": " . . . Long before she left school, Clara discovered that whatever negligent indifference might greet h e r in the bosom of h e r family, she was capable of arousing s t r i f e in b r e a s t s of others than those of Miss Haines and M r s . Hill. The bosomy metaphor is appropriate, f o r Clara developed young, to the astonishment of her contempor a r i e s , who had convinced themselves that sexual and intellectual precocity never coincided." 26* But when M. Drabble spoke of "the bosomy metaphor", "bosomy" was ambivalent: she had achieved such a tremendous effect by just b r i n g ing these two words together, because there w e r e allusions not only to b r e a s t s and bosoms, but also to a certain kind of arrogance, p r e cocity and what not. Anyway the whole thing turned out beautifully, and the word "bosomy" acquired h e r e not only the meaning of "having a bosom", but also the connotation of something "pushing", "arrogant", etc. The fact that all kinds of things can be read into a single word in a particular combination clearly shows that when we say to a student "it is a mistake" and underscore it in red, this does not mean to say

103 that it is quite impossible for a speaker of English ever to produce the word-combination. It is mainly a question of what the student should or should not do. Students should never be allowed to indulge in using words metasemiotically, and should try to confine themselves as strictly and carefully as they can to the usual, neutral, lexicographically registered uses of words and word-combinations. It goes without saying, then, that there is all the difference in the world between Puskin or Shakespeare and even Margaret Drabble on the one hand, and the foreign student of English, on the other. The latter should never be allowed to use metasemiotically conditioned combinations. He must be perfectly familiar with the basic nominative meaning of every word he (or she) uses and combine words intelligently, exploit their basic potentialities to the best of his (or her) ability. Thus, for instance, what is wrong with "I must prove my every word", if anything? We shall obviously get nowhere by asking whether it is "correct" from the point of view of the "valency" of the verb "to prove" to combine it with the word "word". Otherwise stated, is "to prove words" as a word-combination permitted according to the rules of the so-called "distribution" ? We recommend an altogether different approach. We must know the real, nominative meaning of every word we use, we must know what the words really mean. If we do, we cannot go wrong. As far as research in the field is concerned, the main point is to establish the "hierarchy" of errors. In the preceding chapter (pp. 83-84) we gave a list of unwarranted "substitutions" on the semantic level, e.g. "peculiar" for "special", "permanent" for "constant", "definitely" for "fully", etc. Returning to the same text we now claim that the following list of examples belongs to style, the metasemiotic level. Thus: "the scientific achievements lately obtained . . . "

"the recent scientific achievements . . . "

"man's (speaking-organs)"

"human (speech organs)"

"audition and articulation . . . "

"the hearing and the speaking . . . "

"verified"

"tested" 27*

" . . . the language patterns of the articulation and tonation of an individual . . . "

"an individual's articulation and intonation patterns . . . "

"there are many homonyms

" a considerable number of homonyms . . . "

"in order to achieve clarity and quick orientation of discussion . . . "

"for clarity and to assist discussion . . . "

" . . . and in order to make this

" . . . as well as to bring out this

M

104 I particular task stand out . . . "

particular point. "

When we caution the student against sinning on the creatively-metasemiotic side, against taking liberties with the language and attempting more than he can really do, we did not mean that students of language should in general confine themselves to the semantic level and forget all about metasemiotics, because they are foreigners and are using English as a means of international communication. The fact of the two levels being closely connected with each other is borne out by what is usually described as "semantic analysis". Our criticism will now be levelled at dictionaries in general. The writers of dictionaries unfortunately are not more linguistically minded than most other practical workers in the field. That is the reason why, for instance, the different meanings of the verb "to love" will appear in a dictionary as (1) have strong affection or deep tender feeling for: to love one's parents, (2) worship, (3) be very fond of, have a taste for, relish: I love ice-cream, etc. But "I love icecream" can be easily shown to be completely different from the first "love" from the point of view of lexicological phonetics. 28* No person is ever believed really to feel that strong and genuine emotion when talking of ice-creams, for example. There is no room here for a detailed discussion of methods of s e mantic analysis and, especially, of lexicographic description of words. We should like to think, nevertheless, that what we have said about the interrelation of the semantic and metasemiotic levels may be found useful. NOTES 1* " . . . The more widely that English has come to be used in the world, the more necessary it has become for the foreign learner to restrict himself to mastering sufficient for his particular purpose . . . To quote again from the Annual Report of the British Council for 1960-61: . . . the African politician at the United Nations Assembly, the scientist at an international conference, the merchant, businessman and technician, all require English for their special professional use because it is a world language. The kind of English they need, and the level of proficiency they must have, depend on the uses to which they wish to put it" (pp. 23-24). 2* No point, of course, in stooping to the level of "That, that " (To, gto . . . ) ; Cf. Olga Akhmanova and Galina Mikael'an, The Theory of Syntax in Modern Linguistics, Mouton, The Hague, 1969, pp. 106109. 3* Harold E. Palmer, Everyday Sentences in Spoken English, 5th ed., Cambridge, Heffer, 1935. 4* Harold E. Palmer, op. c i t . , p. V. 5* Harold E. Palmer, op. c i t . , p. VI. 6* Harold E . Palmer, op. c i t . , p. VII. 7* Harold E. Palmer, op. c i t . , pp. VHf. 8* See Voprosy Optimalizacii Jestestvennyx Kommunikativnyx Sistem, ed. by O. S. Akhmanova, MGU, M . , 1971.

105 9* Alan Warner, A Short Guide to English Style, Oxford University Press, London, 1961. 10* Alan Warner, op. c i t . , p. 12. 11* Alan Warner, op. c i t . , p. 12. 12* Alan Warner, op. c i t . , p. 12. 13* Alan Warner, op. c i t . , p. 13. 14* See below, p. 172. 15* " . . . To study the phonemes, the morphology, the syntax and the vocabulary of a language is to do a great deal; but even the greenest student-teacher knows that perfect phonemes + perfect grammar + perfect command of vocabulary does not equal acceptable usage. One needs at least two things more - stylistic awareness, and command of the full range of vocal effects that can carry meaning in the community - those features of pronunciation which are not necessarily phonemic in c h a r a c t e r . . . " (D. Crystal, "New Perspectives for Language Study", "English Language Teaching", Vol. XXIV, No. 3, May 1970, p. 212. 16* Alan Warner, op. c i t . , p. 16. 17* Alan Warner, op. c i t . , p. 62. 18* The "small faults" are the following: (1) it is more idiomatic to write "without fail" than "without any failing", (2) although an Englishman would not speak of bringing vegetables up by hand, the phrase is both vivid and humorous, (3) in "very sordid, very dirty a place is Moysein" the article is misplaced. 19* O. A. Akhmanova and V. V. Veselitsky, "O Slovar'ax Pravil'no] Reci", Leksikograficeskij Sbornik, vol. 4, 1960, pp. 125-131. 20* Olga Akhmanova, "More on Social Dialect and Language History", Current Anthropology, Sept.-Nov., vol. 1, Nos. 5-6, pp. 426ff. 21* D. Crystal, op. c i t . , p. 212. 22* If some English people will feel doubtful about it, this is probably because they do not notice something they are used to. In some social groups the frequent use of hesitation phenomena may even be regarded as "good form". 23* See: L. V. Necajeva, "K voprosu o leksikofonologiceskom analize", in: Sbornik laboratorii ustnoj reci filologiceskogo fakul'teta, M . , MGU, 1971, p. 78. See also L'udmila Minajeva, "Concerning Lexicological Phonology", in: Lexicology: Theory and Method, M. , MGU, 1972, Part I, ch. 2. 24* This "reading" or "performance" of the texts is based on the r e search in the field of lexicological phonetics. The recurrent prosodic parameters have been carefully listed and explained and are now presented in the form of a set of prosodic rules. (See "Patterns and Productivity", M . , MGU, 1973, pp. 58-69. 25* The word "bosomy" was investigated together with other " - y " adjectives by Irina Krasnova. See "The Sociolinguistic Approach to Derivation", Lexicology: Theory and Method, ed. by Olga Akhmanova, MGU, M . , 1972, Part IV, ch. 2 . , p. 146. 26* Margaret Drabble, Jerusalem the Golden, p. 46. 27* With the British style in view. 28* See footnote 1 on page 104.

APPENDIX

1

NORM AND DEVIATION

In so far as the very concept of "style" presupposes variation, it must be assumed that it also implies choice by the speaker or writer from among various forms and constructions the linguistic system offers him. Being a system, it cannot but impose certain constraints, whose nature, so many think, can be discovered only by means of statistical analysis. The main principle of the statistical approach is to establish a certain statistical norm, a certain statistical regularity, to find a set of average values. Individual "choice" will then be measured in terms of deviation from those "norms" or average values. The special difficulties of applying statistical methods in linguostylistics are caused by the extreme complexity of the subject. In studying language in general, and linguistic style in particular, we constantly encounter situations in which the phenomena under consideration do not lend themselves easily to statistical treatment. Language is a system composed of a large number of diverse objects, interacting according to very complex and for the most part so far undiscovered laws. The functioning of linguistic and especially of linguostylistic units, usually depends on so many factors that it is practically impossible to take them all into account and determine the outcome of their interaction. For this reason, it is only comparatively rarely that strict, fully determined rules have been formulated even for the less obstinate levels of language. The task becomes immeasurably more complex when one sets out to deal with the metasemiotic level - with the infinite complexity and "polydimensionality" of linguostylistics. Nevertheless, linguostylisticians are far from giving up the idea of style as a statistical average. Deviations will then be measured in terms of particular situations. Since style is the specific form of the message, it must be conditioned by a set of very complex "parameters", whose combinations are the more unique, the more a given style is original. A few working definitions of the terms are: (1) A parameter is a variable entering into the mathematical form of any distribution in such a way that the possible values of the variable correspond to different distributions. (2) Distribution is the specific frequency and combination of units within a given corpus. (3) A corpus is a stretch of text written or spoken. It is assumed that in any text there is a certain distribution that is typical of that p a r ticular corpus (or shared by it with other corpuses of the same genre). Linguostylistics then is constituted or established as a separate

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linguistic discipline by the fact that different corpuses have different distributions of linguistic units. But the method becomes statistical only if the distribution is given a mathematical form. This follows from the definition of parameter as a "variable entering into the mathematical form of any distribution . . . " In other words, the idea of variability and different distributions is the basis of linguostylistics. Statistics can come into play only if the concept of mathematical distribution is fully established. This is obviously connected with the concept of frequency. When frequencies of occurrence are established, the researcher arrives at certain "aleatory schemata", which constitute the stylistic norms. These are used as the starting point for individual deviations to be established and interpreted. It has already been explained above that the application of statistical methods must be preceded by a minute investigation of relevant parameters. Before we begin to count, we must know what to count and what to count it for. In other words, our parameters must be chosen in such a way as to reveal something that is scientifically important and fruitful from the point of view of scientific knowledge, for there is nothing more pernicious than counting for its own sake. Worse still are the elaborate series of mathematical symbols flourished and flaunted before the bewildered reader mainly in order to impress him with the superiority of the "mathematical linguist", who, though difficult to understand, is revered, because believed to be very sophisticated and highbrow. Long before any mention of statistical linguostylistics was made, the concept of a "mean value", "statistical norm" lingered, however vaguely, in the stylistician's mind. Thus, although there was no question of objective methods in the modern sense of the word, the linguostylist had no doubt that, e . g . , "He popped off" and "He made his exit" were "deviations" from the "neutral": without attempting a mathematical approach it would be simply stated that both "deviated" from "went away" - the "medium" realization, the "neutral" way of saying it. But how is one to discover the actual parameters or basic dimensions of style ? At first it appeared that the problem could be more readily solved if we could turn to psycholinguistics: the idea was that the search for relevant dimensions should be based on what was described as "subjective" measures, assessments or evaluations made by competent individuals. Ask people to express their opinion of a given text by submitting to them the following list of questions: Is this corpus (1) profound or superficial, (2) subtle or obvious, (3) succinct or wordy, (4) graceful or awkward, (5) vigorous or placid, (6) clear or hazy, (7) natural or affected, (8) lush or austere, (9) earnest or flippant, etc. ? 1* John B. Carroll describes the above parameters as "subjective" ones and contrasts them with an even longer inventory of what he calls "objective" parameters. These are not psycholinguistic but merely linguistic in character. They are: (1) number of paragraphs, (2) number of syllables in a word, (3) sentence length, (4) transitive vs. intransitive verbs, (5) Latin-derived verbs vs. verb-adverb combinations (e.g. "He was assassinated" and "He was done in"), (6) time

Ill orientation, (7) infinitives, participles, gerunds, (8) nouns with Latin suffixes, (9) descriptive adjectives over against limiting adjectives, (10) pronouns, (11) determiners, (12) prepositions, etc. 2*

The number of parameters already specified could be multiplied indefinitely; the number of successfully employed ones is, however, very small. Although, at first sight, it might appear to be a side issue, the singling out of "parameters" was greatly hampered by the fact that linguostylistics still lacks an adequate metalanguage to denote or name different parameters. Most of the existing terms lack scientific precision; they are mostly descriptive, coined "ad hoc", for the nonce. Thus, for example, such words as "always", "never", "forever", "everyone", etc., were collectively defined as "allness terms". We could conclude by reporting on the results, achieved by one of the present authors. Lydia Natan has succeeded in singling out a number of parameters which enabled her to achieve very interesting r e sults. The corpus under investigation was the complete inventory of everything Soames Forsyte said (both in dialogue and interior monologue) in the course of the whole of "The Forsyte Saga", the object being a complete (overall) comparative analysis of that character's "speech characteristics". The parameters, which yielded important linguostylistic results were: (1) ratio of everyday words over against elevated or substandard ones, (2) "properly formatted" sentences over against incomplete ones (elliptical sentences, including emotional ones, etc.), (3) abstract (general) statements over against statements about concrete facts (events), (4) words denoting emotions, connected with the expression of feeling over against matter-of-fact referential words, (5) "idioms proper" (sobstvenno idiomy) vs. "casual" phraseological units, 3* (6) the use of the indicative mood over against the oblique mood (i.e. what a person prefers to speak about, either what is, was, will be rather than what would be, is desired, is preferred, etc.), (7) continuous vs. non-continuous (different ways of viewing the actions, processes, phenomena, etc., spoken about, e . g . , "I shall send you a letter" vs. "I am sending you a letter"). All these parameters are based on a clear-cut binary opposition. Lydia Natan has discovered that by applying these parameters it is possible to describe or state quite objectively facts which hitherto have appeared too elusive or subtle for exact scientific formulation. "Parameters" and "vectors" are quite naturally associated with the concept of "space". Even the most widely accepted idea of "style" as choice 4* between synonymous expressions can be imagined as a kind of spatial relationship, for "synonyms" are those members of a thematic series which require either a statement of identity or an exact discrimination. By "thematic groups" we mean a group of linguistic units which bear upon the same concept. This term is based on the assumption that all the words of a language can be brought together as certain lists (or inventories) of units because they bear upon the same concept (domain, area), on the same semantic field or "semantic space" or section of extralinguistic reality. In terms

112 of "space" the likelihood of the presence in neutral style of a synonym to a "familiar" or an "elevated" word is considered as directly p r o portional to the "stylistic distance" separating a given word from the neutral. The three main divisions of "stylistic space" which go back to Lomonosov in this country are: neutral, elevated, low. Words of low style are those used in ordinary, trivial and hence frequent situations. Words of high (solemn) style a r e used in r a r e (unusual and t h e r e f o r e infrequent speech situations, while words of neutral style a r e not associated with any particular kind of speech situation. T h e r e fore they p o s s e s s the highest frequency. This can also be presented in the form of two p a i r s of binary oppositions: (1) words not a s s o c i ated with a particular speech situation, (2) words associated with particular speech situations: (a) associated with r a r e speech situations, (b) associated with frequent speech situations. How f a r taxonomies of this kind will go in the future, whether they will really s e r v e as reliable guides in the investigation of genuine u t t e r ances, still remains to be seen. 5* NOTES 1* John B. Carroll, "Vectors of P r o s e Style", in Style in Language, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, M a s s . , 1960, p. 287. 2* John B. Carrol, op. c i t . , p. 287. 3* P a r a m e t e r 5 includes both the idiomatic expressions which are part and parcel of everyday usage, and those used f o r comic effects or other purposes. These a r e "idioms proper" and can be exemplified by such combinations as "much water has flown under the bridges", "take the bull by the horns", etc. Also, e . g . , "whatever the weather" vs. "rain or shine". When the speaker says: "Can the leopard change his spots", he is perfectly aware that the leopard has nothing to do with what he is going to say. 4* " . . . We must recall the two basic modes of arrangement used in verbal behavior, selection and combination. If "child" is the topic of the m e s s a g e , the speaker selects one among the extant, m o r e or less s i m i l a r , nouns like child, kid, youngster, tot, all of them equivalent in a certain respect, and then, to comment on this topic, he may s e lect one of the semantically cognate verbs - sleeps, dozes, nods, naps . . . The selection is produced on the base of equivalence, similarity and dissimilarity, synonymity and antonymity, while the combination, the build up of the sequence, is based on contiguity. The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination" (Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics", in Thomas A. Sebeok e d . , Style in Language, M a s s . , 1960, p. 358). 5* Very useful and up-to-date information concerning the topic broached in this chapter can be found in Aktual'nyje Problemy Kul'tury Reel, M . , "Nauka", 1970.

2 VARIATION AND ACCEPTABILITY 1*

This aspect of discourse is usually taken up at the level of m a j o r syntax. If we were to turn to some of the examples, many of which have become "linguistic folklore" owing to the popularity of Chomskyite writings, we would see that the material is usually presented in the form of sentences. Thus: Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. 2* Two glasses of champagne ago he was still sober. A grief ago, she . . . sailed up the sun. 3* A the ago he was still happy. Company loves John. Golf plays John. Golf plays aggressive. Abundant loves company. As has repeatedly been stated above, the task of linguostylistics is to go very deeply into the ways of interpreting an utterance, and m o r e generally, whatever has been said or written. The human addressee always t r i e s to "construe" what he h e a r s , to think of different i n t e r pretations, to read these into the texts, etc. It is natural with human language for the listener or r e a d e r to presume that what the speaker or w r i t e r is "passing on" to him must by definition contain a certain purport (or, as people p r e f e r to say nowadays, convey a c e r tain information). This has been repeatedly tested. It is natural with human language to try very hard to understand what is being said, to meet the speaker halfway. Otherwise human communication would be impossible. Thus communication depends to a high degree on the receptivity of the listener, who, naturally, is f o r e v e r trying to catch, discover, even "reconstruct" what he thinks was the intention of the speaker. In P a r t IV a considerable body of material has been analysed at the level of sentences and higher - supra-phrasal entities - because this is the form discourse normally h a s . Detailed analysis, however, is impossible unless the units under investigation a r e not only short and compact, but also within the range of the simplest, typical and r e g u larly reproduced syntactic p a t t e r n s . For English these a r e : (1) SVO (John plays golf), (2) Infinitive + direct object (to p e r f o r m a task), (3) Adverbialized nominal groups (a y e a r , month, week ago).

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With the great masses of "linguistic folklore" at our command, it is easy to demonstrate within the basic patterns the three-fold (trichotomic) taxonomy: (1) "grammatical" ("otmecenoje"), (2) the "unusual" or "stylistically peculiar", and (3) the "ungrammatical". Thus: John plays golf. 1 John loves company. Sincerity frightens John. 2

Company loves John. Golf plays John.

3 Golf plays aggressive. Abundant loves company. 1 To perform a task. 2 To perform leisure. 3 To perform compel. 1 A year (month, week) ago. 2 A glass of chatnpagne ago. A grief ago (one step further from the rational). 3 A the ago The "linguistic folklore" which was alluded to above, contains large numbers of now popular concoctions of the "glokaja kuzdra" type: 4* ingenious "operations" and "transformations" of the "woggles ugged diggles" type 5* cannot fail to bring it home to the student of language that there do exist certain regularly reproducible and transformable, "completely non-semantic" patterns which do form the core of a language's syntax. Difficulties, so far unsurmounted, begin when these patterns cease to serve as a mere playground for the syntactic amateur, when it is no longer merely a question of wilfully constructing and "transforming" them. It has long been known (and recently proved again and again) 6* that the natural human language is not a well-defined rational and closed system. It is a system sui generis which exists only in and through speech - an exceptionally complex and multiform kind of human "behaviour" - and knows no other form of existence. This being the case, anything can happen in language. The most unusual, at first sight completely incomprehensible, combinations are suddenly found to convey new and complex messages. 7* Even the most fantastic sentences of the type analysed in this chapter have been "construed" to serve certain well-defined purposes. Actual discourse and its segmentation are based on dialectical unity of colligation and collocation. 8* The main difficulty is in the latter, and it will take a very long time before even a generally satisfying approach to this problem is discovered. 9* It is, therefore, out of the question to attempt anything like an overall linguostylistic analysis of this vast and practically unexplored field of knowledge here and

115 now. As far as Cross-Cultural Communication is concerned, it is assumed here that we know the language and can therefore tell the "acceptable" or "correct" combinations from the unacceptable or incorrect ones which the foreign student tends to transplant into his variant of the new (or "target") system under the influence of the "old" (or "vernacular") one. 10* NOTES 1* The concept of "variation" and "acceptability" ("being acceptable in terms of the recognized or accepted literary usage - the norm") are part and parcel of linguostylistics. Cf. Aktual'nyje Problemy Kul'tury Reci (Outstanding Problems of Culture of Speech, M . , "Nauka", 1970, p. 7f.): "Variation within a norm is presented as a consecutive delimitation of the normative plane ("normativnyj plan") literacy - non-literacy ("literaturnost' - neliteraturnost' ") - and the stylistic one (appropriateness - inappropriateness in different kinds and types of discourse - "umestnost' - neumestnost' " . . .). It follows that linguostylistics includes an appraisal, the ability to judge whether a certain way of speaking is suitable for a given situation. In other words, it is concerned not only with discovering the expressive-evaluative-emotional characteristics of linguistic units, but also with the way inherent linguistic means are brought into play in a concrete utterance and made to serve a certain purpose. 2* Particularly interesting is Roman Jakobson's detailed linguistic, linguostylistic and philological analysis of this sentence: "Thus parsing the allegedly nonsensical sentence "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" . . . we extract the pluralized topic, "ideas", said to develop a "sleeping" activity, and both terms are characterized - the "ideas" as "colourless green" and the "sleep" as "furious". These grammatical relations create a meaningful sentence which can be submitted to a truth test: do things like colourless green, green ideas, sleepy ideas or a furious sleep exist or not? "Colourless green" is a synonymous expression for "pallid green" with a slight epigrammatic effect of an apparent oxymoron. The metaphoric epithet in "green ideas" is reminiscent of Andrew Marvel's famous "green thought in green shade" and of the Russian idiom "green boredom" (zelenaja skuka) or of Tolstoj's "horror red, white and square" (vse tot ze uzas krasnyj, belyj, kvadratnyj). In the figurative sense the verb "sleep" means "to be in a state like sleep, as that of inertness, torpidity, numbness, e.g. "his anger never slept": why, then, cannot someone's ideas fall into sleep? And, finally, why cannot the attribute "furious" emphatically render a frenzy of sleep ? Dell Hymes actually found an application for this sentence in a senseful poem written in 1957 and entitled "Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously" (Roman Jakobson, "Boas' View of Grammatical Meaning", American Anthropologist, vol. 61, No. 5, Part 2, Oct. 1959, pp. 143f.). Also: Olga Akhmanova and Galina Mikael'an, The Theory of Syntax in Modern Linguistics, Mouton, The Hague, 1969, p. 98. 3* The sentence is taken from "Collected Poems" by Dylan Thomas,

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London, 1967, p. 54: 4* " . . . There is a very large number of "sentences" of this kind in the literature, beginning with Sfferba's "glokaja kuzdra Stenno budlanula bokra i kudl'avit bokr'onka", "Jabberwocky" in ("Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll), or Fries' "the vapy koobs desaked the citar molently" . . . All languages have registered in their inventories of accumulated "ergons", innumerable proverbs, sayings, puns, nursery rhymes, e t c . , in which the more obvious "valencies" of words are purposefully violated. The number of "ergons" of this kind is now enormously increased by the new, specific, and so far unanalysed "folklore", the fragments of which are scattered over the innumerable books on modern linguistics - all the "laughing triangles", which "were drunk up by a shoe-string", "the green horses smoking a dozen oranges", etc. (Olga Akhmanova and Galina Mikael'an, op. c i t . , p. 96). 5* In The Structure of English (London, 1961) Ch. C. Fries offers nonsense-sentences - "woggles ugged diggles, uggs woggled diggs and woggs diggled uggles" and "transforms" them into: "A woggle ugged a diggle, an ugg woggles diggs, A digged woggle ugged a woggled diggle . . . " . 6* See esp. Charles F. Hockett, The State of the Art, "Mouton", The Hague, 1968. 7* Cf. above, p. 70. 8* See Olga Akhmanova, et a l . , Sintaksis kak Dialekticfeskoje Jedinstvo Kolligacii i Kollokacii, MGU, M. , 1969. 9* For a detailed discussion of this extremely important aspect of speech see Part IV, "The Linguostylistics of Cross-Cultural Communication" .

REFERENCES

Akhmanova, Olga 1957 Ocerki po obgifej i russkoj leksikologii (Essays in General and Russian Lexicology) (Moscow). 1961 Some Comments on Social Dialect, Style and Usage. In: Philologica Pragensia, vol. 4, No. 3. 1969 Slovar' lingvisticeskix terminov (A Dictionary of Linguistic Terms) (Moscow, Sovetskaja Enciklopedija). 1971 Phonology, Morphonology, Morphology (The Hague - Paris, Mouton). Akhmanova, Olga and Galina Mikael'an 1969 The Theory of Syntax in Modern Linguistics (The Hague Paris, Mouton). Akhmanova, Olga, and Rolandas F. Idzelis 1973 What is the English We Use ? (Moscow, MGU). Akhmanova, Olga, et al. 1965 Ob osnovnyx pon'atijax normy reci (Concerning the General Concepts of the Norm of Speech) In: Filologiceskije Nauki, 1965, No. 4. 1966 O principax i metodax lingvostilisticeskogo issledovanija (Concerning the Principles and Methods of Linguostylistics) (Moscow, MGU). Akhmanova, Olga (ed.) 1970 Principles and Methods of Linguostylistics (Moscow, MGU). 1971 Principy i Metody Leksikologii kak sociolingvisticeskoi discipliny (Principles and Methods of Lexicology as a Sociolinguistic Discipline) (Moscow, MGU). Voprosy optimalizacii jestestvennyx kommunikativnyx sistem (The Problems of Optimalization of Natural Communication Systems) (Moscow, MGU). 1972 Lexicology: Theory and Method (Moscow, MGU). Linguostylistics: Theory and Method (Moscow, MGU). 1973 The Prosody of Speech (Moscow, MGU). Akhmanova, Olga, and Ester Mednikova (eds.) 1971 Problemy neidiomaticeskoi frazeologii (The Problems of Non-idiomatic Phraseology) (Moscow, MGU). Akhmanova, Olga, and Galine Mikael'an (eds.) 1972 Syntax: Theory and Method "(Moscow, MGU). Crystal, D. and D. Davy 1970 Investigating English Style (London). Crystal, D. and R. Quirk 1964 System of Prosodic and Paralinguistic Features in English

118 (Cambridge, Heffer). Enkvist, H. E . , et al. 1967 Linguistics and Style (London). Firth, R. J . 1964 The Tongues of Men and Speech (London). Gordon, Ian 1966 The Movement of English P r o s e (London, Longmans). Hockett, Charles A. 1968 The State of the Art (The Hague - P a r i s , Mouton). J e s p e r s e n , Otto 1958 Growth and Structure of the English Language (Oxford). Jones, Daniel 1950 The Pronunciation of English (Cambridge). Kostomarov and Skvorcov, L. I. (eds.) 1970 Aktual'nyje problemy kul'tury reci (Moscow, Nauka). Mead, M. 1964 Continuities and Cultural Revolution (New Haven and London). P e r r i n e , Laurence 1956 Sound and Sense (An Introduction to Poetry) (New York). P a l m e r , Harold E. 1935 Everyday Sentences in Spoken English, 5th e d . , (Cambridge, Heffer). Potter, Simeon 1957 Our Language (London, Penguine Books). Quirk, R. 1968 The Use of English, 2nd ed. (London, Longmans). Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.) 1960 Style in Language (Mass.). Sweet, Henry 1964 The Practical Study of Languages (London, Oxford University P r e s s ) . Vinokur, G. O. 1959 Izbrannyje raboty po russkomu jazyku (Selected Papers on Russian) (Moscow, Ucpedgiz). Vinogradov, V. V. 1963 Stilistika. Teorija poeticeskoi r e c i . Poetica. (Stylistics. The Theory of Poetic Speech. Poetics.) (Moscow). Warner, A. 1961 A Short Guide to English Style (London, Oxford University Press).

INDEX OF NAMES

Addison, Joseph 62 Arabski, Janush 90 Arnold, Irina 13 Auden, W. H. 64, 67, 68, 69 Austen, Jane 51, 52, 66 Bel'ajev, V. F. 88 Benedict, Ruth 41 Binyon, Laurence 100 Blok, Alexander 34, 35 Carlyle, Thomas 66, 68 Carroll, John B. 110, 112 Carroll, Lewis 116 Close, R. A. 88 Couperie, T e r r i e n de la 59, 77 Crystal, David 25, 49, 50, 99, 105 Darwin, Ch. R. 63 Davy, Derek 25, 49 Defoe, Daniel 59 Donne, John 44 Drabble, Margaret 102, 103, 105 Drauzdauskiene, L. M. 50 Duäkova, L. 90 Eliot, T. S. 45 Enkvist, N. E. 90 Esenin, Sergei 34 Firth, J . R. 89 F r i e s , Ch. C. 116 Fowler, H. W. 59, 64, 68 Gal'perin, I. R. 13 Gibbon, Edward 71 Ginzburg, Rosalia 13 Gordon, Ian A. 50, 62 Hill, L. A. 90

Hockett, Charles F. 116 Hornby, A. S. 21 Hymes, Dell 115 Jakobson, Roman 16, 19, 33, 39 46, 47, 50, 90, 112, 115 J a m e s , Carl 88 Jerome.K. J e r o m e 47 J e s p e r s e n , Otto 19, 90 Johnson, Samuel 62, 63 Jones, Daniel 88 Krasnova, Irina 105 Kuznec, M. D. 13 Lomonosov, M. V. 112 Longfellow, H. W. 16, 48 Macaulay, W. M. 60 Marvel, Andrew 115 Maugham, W. Somerset 60, 67, 69 Mead, Margaret 45 Mednikova, E s t e r 91 MikeS", George 15, 19, 20 Natan, Lydia 111 Nickel, Gerhard 88 P a l m e r , H. E. 94, 95, 104 P e r r i n e , L. 35, 36, 39 Poe, Edgar Alan 48 Potter, Simeon 59 Quirk, Randolph 47, 50, 92, 96 Richards, I. A. 42, 43 Sebeok, Thomas A. 19, 39, 45,112 Shakespeare, William 42, 43,103 Skrebnev, Ju. M. 13

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Stevenson, R. 40 Sweet, Henry 76, 77, 79, 81, „ 83, 85, 89, 90, 98 gfierba, L. V. 116 Sernas, V. 88 gevfienko, Tat'jana 63, 71 Svarckopf, B. S. 88 Tennyson, Alfred 36, 37, 44 Tey, Josephine 47 Thomas, Dylan 60, 115 Tolstoj, L. N. 32

Trollope, Anthony 61, 62, 66 Veselitsky, V. V. 99 Vinogradov, V. V. 34, 39 Vinokur, G. O. 33, 34, 39 Warner, Alan 62, 71, 97, 105 Wordsworth, William 18, 45, 48 Yotsukura, Sayo 91 giff, P. 89 Zelvys, V. I. 91

INDEX OF TERMS

abstract ideas 63 accent 78 active voice 15 addressee 47 adherent connotation 17, 18, 20, 21, 28, 40 adjective 15, 21, 25 advertisement 49 aesthetic function 49 allusion 102 alternating rhythm 66, 70 anacrusis 56 anticadence 64 anapaestic 56 antithesis 60 antithetic opposition 63 antonymity 112 apodosis 64 archaic 8, 15 arithmetical fallacy 77, 83, 89 articles 87 articulation 24 assonance 49 auditory analysis 100 background knowledge 40, 44 balanced clauses 60 balanced paragraph 61 balanced sentence 59, 60, 63, 69, 70 bookish 15 breath-group 65 caritive 25 classical rhetoric 64 "choice" 93, 94, 99, 109 choreic 56 clause 64 clausula 56 climax 11, 60, 70 "clean" English 97 cliché 98 code 4, 41, 46, 62

collocation 114 colligation 114 colloquial 7 communication 3, 32, 47, 65, 113; bilingual 32, intellective 78; international 77, 78, 84, 85, 92, 93 , 96, 104; means of 32; polylingual 32; vernacular 85 communicative function 42 communicative system 4 conative function 46, 47 connotation 6, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 28, 37, 38, 40, 44; by evocation 40; m e t a - 35; m e t a m e t a - 35; referential 32; stylistic 9 connotative 21, 24 content 6, 38, 40, 46, 81, 101; underlying 46 ; units of 46 context 47, 60; philological 42; of situation 18 conversational style 59 corpus 109, 110, 111 c r o s s - c u l t u r a l communication 73, 75, 76, 79, 81, 92, 93, 94, 96, 115 (also intercultural) deixis 86 denotation 17, 18, 29, 30, 40 derogatory 38 deviation 75, 76, 109, 110 dialect 78 dialogue 24, 111 diapason (pitch-range) 24 didacticism 99 digest 9, 10, 13 direct method 77 directionality 10 discourse 30, 64, 69, 97, 113, 114 distribution 103, 109, 110 double coding 41

122 "elegant" variation 99 elevated 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 18, 21, 112 emotional colouring 17 emotive function 46, 47 emphasis 24 enantiosemy 31 enclosing rhythm 67, 68, 70 enunciation 78 Esperanto 97 euphemism 99 expanded reiteration 16 expression 38, 46; plane 101; units of 46 expressive-emotional-evaluative 15, 19, 30, 115 extension 89 extralinguistic: categories 90; object 21; reality 22, 29, 111 evaluative 25; evaluative-emotional 101 evocation 17 facetious 15 familiar 112 feminine endings 56 fetishes 99 fiction (belles lettres) 17, 33, 38 folk taxonomy 31 foreign languages 75, 76, 78, 84, 85 foreigners' English 76, 87 formal 15; f o r m a l i s m 35, 38; formalist 39 forte 24 functional sentence perspective 87 functions of language 46; of speech 46 frazirovka 64, 65, 71 frequency 112 genre 50 grading rhythm 67, 68, 70 g r a m m a r 77, 83, 87 Hemmung 75, 85 hesitation 100 high style 112 homogeneous p a r t s 11, 12 "idioms p r o p e r " 112 idiomatic 93, 95, 96, 98 imagery 40, 44

implication 23 inflation 63 information 4, 33, 47, 69, 113; explosion 78; theory 46 inherent connotation 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 40, 115 inner f o r m 23, 25 intension 81, 89 intention 113 interaccentual interval 56 interference 87 interior monologue 111 interlinguistics 97 interpretations 81, 113 jargon 63 jerky rhythm 67, 69 Johnsonian-latinised p r o s e 62 "journalese" 63 juncture 65; junctural pattern 65 key-words 16 language 3, 4, 7, 17, 18, 32, 33, 37, 38, 47, 49, 51, 75, 76, 77, 79, 85, 86, 89, 94, 95, 98, 113; of advertising 49 lexical (lexicological) phonetics 23, 101, 104, 105 lexical repetition 69 lexical-phraseological constraints 102 lexical units 20, 30 lexicology 15 linguistic categories 7, 95; linguistic interference 76; linguistic facts 77; linguistic units 15, 17, 110 linguistic "folklore" 113, 114 linguistics 10, 76, 78, 86, 89, 97 linguostylistics 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 15, 16, 17, 21, 23, 32, 33, 42, 59, 73, 92, 93, 97, 109, 111, 113, 115; descriptive 100; prescriptive 100; statistical 110 listener 46, 47 literary a r t 35; language 76; stylistics 39 literature 17, 33, 34, 35, 36 loose sentence 59, 64, 67, 69 loudness 24

123 low style 112 ludicrous 79 m a j o r syntax 57, 113 masculine endings 56 meaning 6, 15, 18, 25, 29, 35, 37, 43, 49, 60, 62, 79, 86, 99; grammatical 15; lexical 7, 15; linguistic 29; nominative 103; t r a n s f e r r e d 37 meaningful absence 19 meliorative 25 melodic contour 64 message 15, 46, 49, 50, 109, 114; secondary 41 metacontent 38, 41 metalanguage 47, 78, 111 metalingual function 46 (metalinguistic 47) metaphor 37, 102, 44, 49 metaphoric 34, 37; image 35; comparison 38; use 38 metaphorical expression 37 metametacontent 38, 39 metametasemiotic: content 45; effect 35; level 34, 35, 37, 38, 44, 92 metasemiotic: function 8, 9, 12, 33, 35, 49, 50; functioning 6; intensions 9; level 8, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 44, 75, 101, 102 (also 49, 50, 103, 109) metasemiotics 9, 32, 33, 37, 104 modal suffix 43 modern prose 62 monotonous rhythm 66, 67, 69, 71 mood: indicative, oblique 111 morpheme 21, 23; z e r o morpheme 19 morfologizacija 23 morphology 15, 23, 76; lexical 23 morphonology 23 motivation 22; linguistic motivation 22 naming 29, 40 narration 24 native speakers 79 neutral (style) 7, 8, 10, 15, 17, 19, 21, 30, 103, 110, 112

nonce-words 100, 101 non-continuous aspect 15, 111 norm 75, 76, 88, 109, 110, 115 normalization 99 novelty hunting 99 onomasiology 29 onomasiological variation 99 ordinary speech 15, 18; ordinary language 35 orthoepy 76, 99 orthography 76 over-zeal 99 paragraph 61, 66, 69, 70, 71, 77, 110; loose 61 paralinguistics 49 parallelism 60 paraphrase 62 parasitic phenomena of sound 160 p a r r o t linguist 75 p a r t s of speech 7 past tense 15 patterns 4, 18, 19, 24, 43, 83, 101, 113, 114; r e c u r r e n t , structural 37 pause 63, 64, 65, 100, 101 pedants 79, 98 pejorative 25, 37 periodic sentence 59, 60, 64, 68; periodic paragraph 61 phatic function 46, 47 phonestheme 22, 23, 25 phonetic structures 49, 77 phonology 15 phonostylistics 49 phraseological units 111 pitch-movement 24, 64 pitch 63, 65 poetic 11, 18, 33, 37, 49; function 35, 46, 47, 112; content 41; language 40 poetry 9, 18, 35, 41, 47; modernist 37, 41 pomposities 99 pon'atijnyje kategorii 86 predicate 60 pride of knowledge 99 proizvedenije reffi 32 pronunciation 24, 96 prose: "educated" 62; expositional 63; general 63; scien-

124 tifie 63, 69; of display 62 prose rhythm 64, 65 prosodic 19, 23, 24, 25, 61; analysis 64; means 65, 71; parallelism 63; parameters 64 prosody 56, 64 protasis 64 pro-words 93 psycholinguistics 46, 110 purport 32, 64, 65, 81, 113 rambling rhythm 59, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71 range 64, 66 referent 6, 18, 29, 47 referential 17, 29, 40; individual 30 referential function 47; referential prose 111 release 24 rhythm 56, 64, 67, 69; constituents 69 rhythmical: arrangement 64; organization 64, 69; structure 56, 69, 71; types 67 semantic: content 6, 15, 75; field (space) 111; function 33; level 8, 33, 34, 35, 38, 44, 75, 92, 101, 102, 103, 114; relationship 12; structure 22, 23, 25, 37 semantics 16; lexical 30 semasiology 29 semiological: system 32, 75; value 100 semiotic 75, 89; devices 100 sense 29, 30, 35, 43; group 65 sentence 32, 35, 60, 63, 66, 67, 71, 76, 78, 98, 113, 114; construction 78; length 110; structure 61, 67, 69 sign 4 signification 29, 30, 40 simplicity 62 slang 8, sound 23, 49, 77, 101

slovoform 23 space 111, 112 speech 3, 4, 16, 17, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 42, 47, 49, 65, 69, 75, 77, 78, 79, 81, 99,

100, 112; community 31, 32; contour 101; event 29, 101, 102 speech-based prose 62 spelling 99 statistical (analysis, norm) 109 style 3, 16, 17, 27, 51, 57, 62, 92, 93, 97, 98, 100, 103, 109; linguistic 53; literary 16 stylistic: colouring 19; connotation 18; construction 11; distance 112; effect 16, 101; space 112 stylistically marked (unmarked) 19 stylistics 3; literary 16 subject 60 subordinate clause 60 substandard English 6 supraphrasal unity 61, 63, 69, 78 syllable 24 , 56, 110 symbol 4, 5 symmetry 62 symmetrical arrangement 63 "symptomatic statistics" 6 syncategorematic words 86 synonymic: series 6; condensation 10; variation 99 synonymity 78, 112 synonyms 7, 8, 9, 11, 111, 112; ideographic 13; stylistic 7, 13 synonymous relations 8, 11 synonymy 6, 9, 10, 11; lexical 7 syntactic: arrangement 99; construction 16, 87; linguostylistics 19; parallelism 69 syntactic-stylistic: means 61; phonetics 71 syntax 15, 16, 76 target language 53, 115 technical vocabulary 63 tempo 24, 64 text 40, 41, 77, 79, 93, 43 thematic group 7, 111 thing(s)-meant 6, 17, 29, 30, 87 topic 61, 63 "translation" 62, 80, 89, 92 transmutation 50 understanding 40, 43

125 units: of expression (of content) 33; of language 18 usage 30, 98, 99, 112 utterance 16, 24, 65, 71, 101, 113 variation 113 varieties of English 78 verbal a r t 33, 34, 35, 42, 45 verbs 15 vernacular 30, 76, 85, 98, 115; (non-) 99 vocabulary 77 voice qualifications 49 voice qualities 49

vulgar 11 world view 31, 88 word 6, 7, 10, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 29, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 62, 71, 83, 100, 102, 103, 111; polysemantic 30; superfluous 99 word-combination 6, 18, 20, 29, 62, 78, 85, 86, 99, 112, 113 word-equivalent 29 word-formation 22, 40 w o r d - o r d e r 87 writing 75

janua linguarum Series Minor l.

JAKOBSON, R. and M. HALLE: Fundamentals o f Language. 4 . CHOMSKY, N.: Syntactic Structures. 13. MORAG, S.: The Vocalization Systems o f Arabie, Hebrew and Aramaic. 16. BASTIDE, R. (éd.): Sens et usages du terme "structure" dans les sciences humaines et sociales. 17. ALLEN, W. S.: Sandhi. 18. J U L I A R D , P.: Philosophies o f Language in EighteenthCentury France. 21. COLLINGE, N. E.: Collectanea Linguistica. 23. LEVIN, S. R.: Linguistic Structures in Poetry. 24. JUILLAND, A. and J . MACRIS: The English Verb System. 26/2. MOL, H.: Fundamentals o f Phonetics, II. 30. GARVIN, P. L.: On Linguistic Method. 32. MOUNIN, Georges: La Machine à traduire: Histoire des problèmes linguistiques. 33. LONGACRE, R. E.: Grammar Discovery Procedures. 34. COOPER, William S.: Set Theory and Syntactic Description. 36. CHATMAN, S.: A Theory o f Meter. 38. CHOMSKY, N.: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. 39. C R Y S T A L , D. and R. Q U I R K : Systems o f Prosodie and Paralinguistic Features in English 4 0 . PAPP, F.: Mathematical Linguistics in the Soviet Union. 4 1 . SAUMJAN, S. K.: Problems o f Theoretical Phonology. Translated from the Russian. 4 2 . IVlC, M.: Trends in Linguistics. 4 4 . DRANGE, T. M.: Type Crossings. 4 5 . F A Y , W. H.: Temporal Sequence in the Perception o f Speech. 4 7 . C L A R K E , B.: Language and Natural Theology. 4 8 . LUBIN, C. K.: Language Disturbance and Intellectual Functioning. 4 9 . ABRAHAM, S. and F . K I E F E R : A Theory o f Structural Semantics. 5 1 . POLLIO, H. R . : The Structural Basis o f Word Association Behavior. 5 2 . ELLIS, J . : Towards a General Comparative Linguistics. 5 3 . M E Y E R S T E I N , R. S.: Reduction in Language. 5 4 . QUIRK, R. and J . S V A R T V I K : Investigating Linguistic Acceptability. 5 5 . S E B E O K , T. A. (ed.): Selected Writings o f Gyula Laziczius. 5 6 . CHOMSKY, N.: Topics in the Theory o f Generative Grammar. 5 8 . H E L L E R , L. G. and J . MACRIS: Parametric Linguistics.

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