英语文体学Chapter 6 Syntactic Overregularity.ppt

English Stylistics Chapter 6 Syntactic Overregularity Syntactic Overregularity Syntactic overregularity in literature is revealed mainly in the repetition of certain linguistic units of a text and in parallelism, where some features vary while others are kept constant. 6.1 Repetition All the overregular features in literature are, in some sense, repetitious. The term repetition, therefore, is restricted to mean the case of exact copying of a certain previous unit in a text, such as a word, phrase or even a sentence. 6.1 Repetition Repetition may be immediate, i.e. the repeated unit immediately follows the initial unit. 6.1 Repetition Example 1 Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day, Rage, rage against the dying of light. (Dylan Thomas, Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night) 6.1 Repetition Example 2 Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammer’d and roll’d, Heavy to get and light to hold. (Thomas Hood) 6.1 Repetition Example 3 The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. (Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening) 6.1 Repetition In this form of repetition, the words repeated are separated from each other by syntactic elements of varying length. The function of repetition is to emphasize a quality or feature of something, and in long passages, to give a cohesive effect to mood or thought. 6.1 Repetition Example 1 Juliet: Oh, he some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet: So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name; And for thy name, which is n