Types of syntactic connection

Parenthetic words, phrases and sentences:

In the following extract one can see the feverish succession of thoughts in Clyde Griffiths' mind:

"... he was struck by the thought (what devil's whisper? - what evil hint of an evil spirit?) - supposing that he and Roberta - no, say he and Sondra - (no, Sondra could swim so well, and so could he) - he and Roberta were in a small boat somewhere and it should capsize at the very time, say, of this dreadful complication which was so harassing him? What an escape! What a relief from a gigantic and by now really destroying problem! On the other hand - hold - not so fast! - for could a man even think of such a solution in connection with so difficult a problem as this without committing a crime in his heart, really — a horrible, terrible crime?" (Dreiser)

In other cases, the parenthetic form of a statement makes it more conspicuous, more important than it would be if it had the form of a subordinate clause:

"The main entrance (he had never ventured to look beyond that) was a splendiferous combination of a glass and iron awning, coupled with a marble corridor lined with palms." (Dreiser)

Paradigmatic semasiology deals with transfer of names or what are traditionally known as tropes. In Skrebnev’s classification these expressive means received the term based on their ability to rename: figures of replacement.

All figures of replacement are subdivided into 2 groups: figures of quantity and figures of quality.

Figures of quantity:

Hyperbole: A thousand pardons. I've told you forty times. He was fright­ened to death. I'd give worlds for it. Haven't seen you for ages.

"One after another those people lay down on the ground to laugh — and two of them died." (“Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning”, Mark Twain).

"There I took out my pig... and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the alley, twenty feet ahead of his squeal." (O. Henry

Two geological ages later, we heard the soles of Alicus’s shoes scrape the front steps (H. Lee)

Meiosis (understatement, litotes):

"And what did you think of our little town?" asked Zizzbaum, with the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite.

"You've got good water, but Cactus City is better lit up."

"We've got a few lights on Broadway, don't you think, Mr. Platt?"(“The Buyer from Cactus City” by O. Henry).

" She sang listlessly as if she were bored with the whole thing, and the applause she collected could have been packed into a thimble, without overflowing." (Chase)/ he lives a stone's throw from here/ a cat-size pony/ a drop of water

I was half afraid you had forgotten me.

I kind of liked it.

She writes rather too often.

I am not quite too late.

A humorous effect is observed when meiotic devices (words and phrase called 'downtoners' - maybe, please, would you, mind, etc) co-occur witty rough, offensive words in the same utterance:

It isn't any of your business maybe.

Would you mind getting the hell out of my way?

Litotes. This term denotes a specific form of meiosis, not an inde­pendent trope. Litotes is expressing an idea by means of negating the opposite idea:

"Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. He is not to be dreaded by widows and orphans; he is a reducer of surplusage." (O. Henry )

"... she was not unlike Morgiana in the 'Forty Thieves'." (Dickens)

"And Captain Trevelyan was not overpleased about it." (Christie)

"A chiselled, ruddy face completed the not-unhandsome picture." (Pendelton)

Less obvious examples:

"You wouldn't exactly call Warley heavily industrialized." (Braine)

"His suit... had... that elasticity disciplined only by first-rate tailoring which isn't bought for very much under thirty guineas.! ”(Braine)

Figures of quality comprise 3 types of renaming:

transfer based on a real connection between the object of nomi­nation and the object whose name it’s given.

Metonymy in its two forms: synecdoche and periphrasis:

Metonymy: / am fond of Dickens; I collect old china.

She is coming, my life, my fate (A. Tennison)

Names of tools instead of names of actions:

"Give every man thine ear and few thy voice." (Shakespeare)

Consequence instead of cause:

…the fish desperately takes the death…

Characteristic feature of the object:

"Blue suit grinned, might even have winked. But big nose in the grey suit still stared." (Priestley)

Symbol instead of object symbolized: crown for king or queen.

Other examples:

"We smiled at each other, but we didn't speak because there were ears all around us." (Chase)

“Save your breath,' I said. 'I know exactly what you have been thinking.“ (Chase)

"... he didn't realize it, but he was about a sentence away from needing plastic surgery." (Clifford)

Synecdoche. The term denotes the simplest kind of metonymy: using the name of a part to denote the whole or vice versa:

hands wanted; All hands on deck!.

"Wherever the kettledrums were heard, the peasant (= all the peasants) threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, tied his small sav­ings in his girdle, and fled with his wife and children to the mountains or the jungles, and the milder neighbourhood of the hyena and the tiger (= of hyenas and tigers)." (Macaulay)

Periphrasis. This does not belong with the tropes, for it is not a transfer (renaming), yet this way of identifying the object of speech is related to metonymy:

"What do you mean by this?" said Sikes, backing his inquiry with a very common imprecation concerning the most beautiful of human features." (“Oliver Twist”. Dickens)

"Major Burnaby was doing his accounts or - to use a more Dickens-like phrase - he was looking into his affairs."

"Pearson had apparently before now occasionally borrowed money — to use a euphemism — from his farm - I may say without their knowledge." (A. Christie)

"Delia was studying under Rosenstock - you know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys (= as a pianist)... Delia did things in six octaves so promisingly..." (= played the piano so well...).

"Up Broadway he turned and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm, and the protoplasm" (= the best wine, dresses, people).

"And then, to the waiter he betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himself were strangers" (= that he did not have a single coin; that he had no money at all). (O’Henry)

Metaphor. This term (originally applied indiscriminately to any kind of transfer) denotes expressive renaming on the basis of similarity of two objects: the real object of speech and the one whose name is actually used. But there is only affinity, no real connection between the two. Similarity on which metaphorical renaming is based may concern any property of the thing meant. It may be colour, form, character of motion, speed, dimensions, value, and so on, that show a resemblance.

Head of Government, film-star, foot of a hill, bottle's neck, leg of a table, needle's eye.

He had enormous difficulty… with depalatalization, never managing to remove the extra Russia moisture from t’s and d’s before the vowels he so quaintly softened. (V. Nabokov, ‘Pnin’)

… century-old historical monographs, their somnolent pages foxed with fungus spots… (Ib.)

A factory worker’s family spent a quiet evening at home. All dressed up, in a parlour choked with ornamental plants, under a great silk lampshade. (Ib)

Trite metaphors: seeds (roots) of evil, a flight of (the) imagination, to burn with desire. to fish for compliments, to prick up one's ears, the apple of one's eye.

"I suppose," said Suzanne doubtfully, "that we're not barking up the wrong tree [= here not accusing an innocent person]?... (Christie)

"Pat and I were chewing the rag about it (= were chatting about it) when the telephone bell on Pat's desk came alive (= rang)." (Chase)

"What's bitingher, I wonder?" (Chase) The implication is: what makes her uneasy. "How about playing the game with the cards face up," Bolan suggested. (Pendelton)

Sustained metaphor:

"In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores... Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman..." (The Last Leaf by O. Henry)

Larry had no notion that he was driving a dagger in to her breast and with his every detached word twisting it in the wound (The Rainbow’s Glory is Shed. Shelly)

It surprised him to realize how fond he had been of his teeth. His tongue, a fat sleek seal, used to flop and slide so happily among the familiar rocks, checking the contours of a battered but still secure kingdom, plunging from cave to cove, climbing this jag, nuzzling that notch, finding a shred of sweet seaweed in the same old cleft; but now not a landmark remained, and all there existed was a great dark wound, a terra incognita of gums which dread and disgust forbade one to investigate. (V. Nabokov, ‘Pnin’)

He preached with fury, with passion, an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of his congregation. But the souls of the faithful at Crome were made of India – rubber, solid rubber, the flail rebounded. (A. Haxley)

Catachresis (or mixed metaphor) - consists in the incongruity of the parts of a sustained metaphor. The incongruous metaphors:

"For somewhere," said Poirot to himself, indulging in an abso­lute riot of mixed metaphors, "there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrow into the air, one will come down and hit a glass-house!" (A. Christie).

Allusion. The term allusion denotes a special variety of metaphor.

"If the International paid well, Aitken took good care he got his pound of flesh..." (Chase)

It’s his Achilles heel (myth of vulnerability).

Personification - attributing human properties to lifeless objects.

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,

Stol’n on his wing my three and twentieth year.’ (Milton)

"Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand on our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained face up to hers, and smiles, and, though she does not speak, we know what she would say and lay our hot, flushed cheek against her bosom and the pain is gone." ( Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome).

Antonomasia defined as a variety of allusion,because in Skrebnev’s view it’s the use of the name of a historical, literary, mythological or biblical personage applied to a person described:

Brutus (traitor), Don Juan (lady’s man.

Allegory (a story, poem, painting, etc. in which the characters and actions represents general truths, good and bad qualities)expresses abstract ideas through concrete pictures.

As for shorter allegorical texts, they are represented by proverbs:

All is not gold that glitters (= Appearances are deceptive); Beauty lies in lover's eyes (= Feeling excites imagination); Every cloud has a silver lining (= A period of distress is sure to have an end); No rose without a thorn (= Everything has its drawbacks).

"After two centuries of crusades the Crescent [= the Moslem religion] defeated the Cross [= Christianity] in all Southwestern Asia." (Daily Worker)

Irony. This well-known term going back to the Greek word eironeia ('mockery concealed') denotes a trope based on direct opposition of the meaning to the sense:

Obviously explicit ironical: That's a pretty kettle of fishl A fine friend you are!