PHONETICS OF SEQUENCES

PART V

STYLISTIC PHONETICS

PHONETICS OF SEQUENCES

A) Alliteration

B) Assonance

C) Paronomasia

D) Rhyme and Metre

F) Rhythm

PHONETICS OF UNITS

A) Onomatopoeia

GRAPHICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES

A) The emphatic use of punctuation

B) The changed type

C) Graphon

LITERATURE:

1. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка. – С. 274-296.

2. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. – P. 123-129.

3. Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. – P. 10-17.

4. Skrebnev Y.M. Fundamentals of English Stylistics. – P. 39-48, 133-145.

PHONETICS OF SEQUENCES

This part of stylistics deals with prosody and interaction of speech sounds in sequences.

The term 'prosody', which is often explained as rules of versifica­tion, i.e. the basic formal theory of poetry, is understood much more broadly in modern linguistics: the term today denotes general suprasegmental characteristics of speech (tonality, length, force, tempo, and, especially, the alternation of stressed and unstressed ele­ments - rhythm).

The number of prosodic variants (intonational treatment) of any se­quence (phrase, sentence, and so on) is theoretically unlimited. The phonetician naturally confines his task to finding out the most general types of intonation - such as comparing 'statement' - 'question' -'exclamation'. But the actual prosodic structure of any real utterance has individual features, which are stylistically significant.

As for interaction of speech sounds, of considerable importance is the recurrence of the same consonant ('alliteration') or the same vowel ('assonance').

A) Alliteration. This term denotes recurrence of an initial consonant in two or more words which either follow one another, or appear close enough to be noticeable. Alliteration is widely used in English - more often than in other languages (Russian, for one). We can see it in po­etry and in prose, very often in titles of books, in slogans, and in set phrases.

Take the well-known book titles: Posthumous Papers of the Pick­wick Club (Ch. Dickens), Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austin). Short story titles: The Pimlenta Pancakes, The Clarion Call, The Last Leaf, Retrieved Reformation (O. Henry).

Set expressions: last but not least, now or never, bag and baggage, forgive and forget, house and home, good as gold, dead as a door­nail, cool as a cucumber, still as a stone.

Alliteration is so favoured in English that sometimes it is used to the detriment of the sense. For the sake of alliteration, the famous Marxist motto Proletarier aller Lander, vereinigt euch! was translated as Workers of the world, uniie! Moreover, the demand of the unem­ployed Work or wages! is absurd, if one does not know that the allit­erating word wages stands here for the dole (charitable gift of money claimable by the unemployed).

Alliteration is an ancient device of English poetry. In the Old En­glish period there were no rhymes as today.

The important role of alliteration in English is due to the fact that words in Old English were mostly stressed on the first syllable.

B) Assonance. This term is employed to signify recurrence of stressed vowels. I.V. Arnold mentions also the term ‘Vocalic alliteration’ (although the recurring vowels only seldom occupy the initial position in the word). In her book Stylislics of Modern English I.V.Arnold quotes three lines from The Raven by Edgar Allan Рое:

... Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aiden,

I shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore-

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?

Assonance here consists in the recurrence of the diphthong [ei], which makes not only inner rhymes (laden - Aiden - maiden), but also occurs in the non-rhyming words: angels and name.

C) Paronomasia. 'Paronyms' are words similar (though not identical) in sound, but different in meaning. Co-occurrence of paronyms is called 'paronomasia'. Phonetically, paronomasia produces stylistic effects analo­gous to those of alliteration and assonance. In addition, phonetic simi­larity and positional propinquity makes the listener (reader) search for semantic connection of the paronyms. This propensity of language users (both poet and reader) to establish imaginary sense correlations on the grounds of formal affinity is named by some linguists 'paronymic at­traction'. In the above quoted book by Arnold two examples are anal­ysed. The words raven and never in Poe's renowned poem (And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting), and the semantically incompatible words poultry and politics - their combination in Michael Mont's inner monologue (John Galsworthy) shows what he thinks of the situation.

D) Rhythm and Metre. The flow of speech presents an alternation of stressed and unstressed elements (syllables). The pattern of interchange of strong and weak segments is called rhythm.

If there is no regularity, no stable recurrence of stressed and un­stressed segments, the text we perceive is an example of prose. If, on the contrary, rises and falls (strengthenings and weakenings) recur peri­odically at equal intervals, the text is classed as poetry (even if it is poor and primitive).

There can be no other way of distinguishing between prose and poetry from the purely linguistic (formally phonetic) viewpoint, which alone is relevant to linguistics. Any discussions of aesthetic value, frequent use of tropes and figures, or generally 'elevated' vision of the world in poetry may be quite important by themselves, but they pertain to the hypersemantic plane of poetry: they are indispensable for a lit­erary critic, but out of place in the treatment of phonetics of se­quences. Besides, the semantic features mentioned are typical not only of vers libre (see below), but also of imaginative prose of high-flown type.

On the whole, the distinctive feature, the most important quality, of poetry is its regular rhythm - not the recurrence of rhyming words, as is presumed by many: rhymes are typical, but not indispensable (see below).

In a verse line, we observe recurrence of disyllabic or trisyllabic segments having identical prosodic structure. The pattern, the combina­tion of stressed and unstressed syllables, is repeated. The smallest re­current segment of the line, consisting of one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed ones is called the 'foot'.

Since a foot consists of only two or three syllables, it is dear that there cannot be many possible combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables. In fact, there are only five. A foot of two syllables has either the first or the second syllable stressed; a foot of three syllables has either the first, the second, or the third syllable stressed. Thus we have two disyllabic varieties of feet and three trisyllabic ones - fivein all.

The structure of the foot determines the metre, i.e. the type of po­etic rhythm of the line. Disyllabic metres are trochee and iambus; tri­syllabic are dactyl, amphibrach and anapaest.

I.R. Galperin writes: "This type of poetry can hardly be called verse from a purely structural point of view... It has become what is sometimes called poetic prose" (idem)

F) Rhyme. This is the second feature (after rhythm) distinguishing verse from prose. The term denotes a complete (or almost complete) coincidence of acoustic impressions produced by stressed syllables (often together with surrounding unstressed ones). As a rule, such syllables do not immediately follow each other: they mostly recur at the very end of verse lines.

Types of Rhyme

1. Rhymes in words ending with a stressed syllable (i.e. monosyl­labic rhymes) are called male (masculine, or single) rhymes:

dreams - streams

obey - away understand - hand

2. Rhymes in words (or word-combinations) with the last syllable unstressed are female (feminine, or double) rhymes:

duly - beauty berry - merry Bicket - kick it (Galsworthy)

Note. The terms 'male' and 'female' have nothing in common with grammatical gender or sex in English and Russian. They were coined in French where the ending and the stress in certain adjectives differ in accordance with their gender.

3. Rhymes in which the stressed syllable is followed by two un­stressed ones are 'dactylic' rhymes (in English, they are preferably called 'triple', or 'treble' rhymes):

tenderly - slenderly battery - flattery

As a rule, it is single words that make a rhyme: stone - alone - own; grey - pray (simple rhymes). Sometimes, however, a word rhymes with a word-group (compound rhymes). They are either femi­nine (bucket - pluck it), or triple (dactylic): favourite - savour it.

According to the position of the rhyming lines, adjacent rhymes, crossing rhymes, and ring rhymes are distinguished. In descriptions, rhymes are usually replaced by letters of the Latin alphabet; every new rhyme being symbolized by a new letter: a, b, c, d, etc. Adjacent: a a b b; crossing: a b a b; ring: abba.

The learner is expected to acquire some knowledge of certain fea­tures of traditional rhyming in the English poetry of past centuries.

One of them is the use of 'eye-rhymes' (or: 'rhymes for the eye'). Properly speaking, they are not rhymes: the endings are pronounced quite differently, but the spelling of the endings is identical or similar.

Thus Byron rhymes the words supply and memory.

For us, even banquets fond regret supply

In the red cup that crowns our memory.

In the well-known poem My Hearts in the Highlands by Robert Burns we encounter:

Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,

Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

The source of this tradition is to be searched for in the remote past when many of the modern homographs were also homophones. Nowadays they are merely accepted as rhymes: no one will mispro­nounce modern words for rhyme's sake.

It is worth noting, however, that numerous eye-rhymes have no historical grounds. Words that never sounded alike came to be used as eye-rhymes due to analogous force: home - come. Love - rove, now- grow, etc.

One should also take into account the dialect used by the writer (dame-warm, river-never were real rhymes for R. Burns) or the time when the poem was written: for Chaucer, the words to pour-labour, have-grave, work-clerk were perfect rhymes.

As mentioned above, rhymes usually occur in the final words of verse lines. Sometimes, though, the final word rhymes with a word in­side the line ('inner', or 'internal' rhyme):

I am the daughter of earth and water... (Shelley)

"I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers." (Shelley)

"Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary." (Рое)

Rhymeless verse is called 'blank verse' ('белый стих' in Russian). It is mostly used by playwrights (see Shakespeare's tragedies); see also The Song of Hiawatha by H.W. Longfellow:

Should you ask me whence these stories,

Whence these legends and traditions

With the odor of the forest,

With the dew and damp of meadows...

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