Types of syntactic repetition

Syntactic parallelism consists in either the juxtaposed recurrence of different words of the same part of speech in the identical syntactic function in the sentence, or in the juxtaposed recurrence of words belonging to different parts of speech but performing the same syntactic function in the sentence, or in the echoing of syntactic patterns in proximate lines, stanzas, utterances and paragraphs.

-series

-suntactic repuplication

-parallel patterns

Series are lexical units of the same part of speech in a coordinate phrase with a joint syntactic function in relation to some part of the sentence; series can be modified by other words (expanded co-ordinate phrase); they can be linked by conjunctions (syndetic coordinate phrase); when series are not linked by conjunctions they form asyndetic co-ordinate phrase). Two rhetorical terms should be introduced in this connection, polysyndeton and asyndeton.

Polysyndeton is a marked repetition of a conjunction before each parallel word; asyndeton.is a marked avoidance of conjunctions.

Series can be divided into three types: binomials consisting of two members;

Binomials (the term was introduced by Y. Malkiel — 69) or word pairs go back to Old English and are a linguistic pattern favoured by many different periods and styles. A large number of subtle observations of modern English binomials have been made by Y. Malkiel. This author has introduced the term "irreversible binomials", i. е., word pairs in which the succession of members has hardened to such an extent that their inversion would be barely understandable to listeners caught by surprise, for example, odds and ends, fast and loose, give and take, ins and outs, etc. As individual artistic creations bino­mials are most conspicuous in the titles of literary works: Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), Pride and Prejudice (Austen). According to G.W.Turner, a series of two items is assertive with a suggestion that no more need be said. The fol­lowing examples will illustrate the use of -binomials in li­terary texts:—

(i)A habitation giddy and unsure

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

(Shakespeare)

(iii) Sleep not, dream not; this bright day

Will not, cannot last for aye. (E. Brontë)

Trinomials consisting three members;

(i) Hickory, dickory, dock!

The mouse ran up the clock;

The clock struck one,

And down he ran,

Hickory, dickory, dock.

(ii) Spring is showery, flowery, bowery;

Summer: hoppy, croppy, poppy;

Autumn: wheezy, sneezy, freezy;

Winter: slippy, drippy, nippy.

The following se­lection from Shakespeare and Whitman will illustrate the use of trinomials in literature:

(i) From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain and nourish all the world.

(ii) Youth, large, lusty, loving — Youth full of grace, force, fascination,

Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?

Catalogues, four or more members:

they are a long tradition going back to Old English where lists or catalogues of things and phenomena were particularly favoured by Wulfstan in his homilies. Description through enumeration in detail is a common rhetorical figure in modern literature as well. A sequence of homogeneous sentence parts creates an intense oscillation, involves the reader into revealing se­mantic identities and differences.

Practically any sentence part can be composed of catalo­gues:—

(i) homogeneous subjects —

My father had left a small collection of books in a little room up-stairs....From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphry Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. (Dickens)

(ii) homogeneous predicates —

It is for these reasons, continued my father, that the governor I make choice of shall neither lisp, or squint, or talk loud, or look fierce, or foolish;— or bite his lips, or gring his teeth, or speak through his no­se, or pick it, or blow it with his fingers. (Sterne)

(iii) homogeneous predicatives —

They were both of them... innocent, artful, roguish, prim, gushing, ignorant, and miraculously wise. (Bennett)

(iv) homogeneous objects —

Most of his time had been taken up with a big deal about army surplus, the surplus consisting of all sorts of unlikely things like tins of beetroot in vinegar, rat-traps, body belts, brass collar studs, gherkins in mustard, rubber shoe heels, and bottles of caper sauce: the sort of things that nobody else seemed to think that any­body wanted. (Bates)

A catalogue is normally a list of like subjects, i. e. is thematic. G. W. Turner observes that the insertion of a dis­parate item is stylistically significant, as in Pope's Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux (83, 107). Joining up most disparate items in a catalogue is a favourite device in children's literature:

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships —■ and sealing-wax —

Of cabbages — and kings — And why the sea is boiling hot —

And whether pigs have wings." (Carrol)

Catalogues may be markedly asyndetic (i), or polysyn-detic (ii); see also the example above from Laurence Sterne:

(i) They pursued — a shriecking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and maidens — howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. (O. Henry)

(ii) Kit turned away and very soon forgot the pony, and the chaise, and the little old lady, and the little old gentleman, and the little young gentleman to boot. (Dickens)

The omission of connectives in a catalogue emphasizes a profusion of detail and their inclusion directs attention to each detail. G. W. Turner illustrates this with two examples from Thackeray's Vanity Fair, "was occupied, as usual, with his papers and tapes and statements of accounts" where each item is given weight, and "Our good child ransacked all her drawers, cupboards, reticules and gimcrack boxes — passed in review all her gowns, fichus, tags, bobbins, laces, silkstockings and fallals — selecting this thing and that and the other, to make a little heap for Rebecca", where "but for a momentary dwelling on unnamed items, the clothes tumble in a heap before the reader" (83, 106).

It should be added that each item of a catalogue may be given a still greater weight if the series is isolated into nomi­nal sentences. The purpose of the nominal sentence is to state the mere existence of the object or phenomenon named.

A series of nominal sentences suggests a ponderous, attentive consideration of each item, as in the following pas­sage where a girl unhurriedly examines the old photographs in her father's album:—

The befrilled baby on a rug, mouth agape, his parents playing croquet. An uncle, killed in the first world war. Her father again, no longer a baby on a rug but in bree­ches, holding a cricket-bat too big for him. Homes of grandparents long dead. Children on beeches. Picnics on moors. Then Dartmouth, photographs of ships. Rows of lined-up boys, youths, men. (du Maurier)

Syntactic reduplication is also known as syntactic tautology or prolepsis. It consists in repetition of the noun-subject in the form of a pronoun. The noun thus separated from the rest of the sentence becomes detached and emphasized. Syntactic reduplication is often used in folklore, old nursery rhymes or in those literary works which imitate folklore.

(i) Then Robin he turns him round about,

And jumps from stock to stone. (Popular Ballad)

(ii) Little Betty Winckle, she had a little pig. It was a little pig, not very big;

When it was alive, he lived in clover, But now he is dead, and that's all over.

Johnny Winckle, he sat down and cried.

Betty Wincle, she lay down and died.

So there was an end of one, two and three:

Johnny Winckle, he —

Betty Winckle, she — And Piggie Wiggie.

Syntactic reduplication is also used in those literary works which imitate folklore:

(i) The wound it seemed both sore and sad. (Goldsmith)

(ii) Young Peterkin he cries... (Southey)

Parallel patterns: syntactic pattern in the proximate segments of the text for 2 or more times. May be complete (number, function, word order) and incomplete/ Chiasmus - reversed word order.

Parallel patterns are the echoing of a syntactic pattern in the proximate segments of the text with different or partially different lexical components. The pa­rallel segments become correlated by way of contrast, resem­blance, analogy, gradation, etc. This very effective means of semantic cohesion and aesthetic arrangement has been a fa­vourite rhetorical figure since ancient times, and has been used in English literature since the earliest period.

As I. M. Astafyeva demonstrates in her thesis (5), pa­rallel patterning can be complete and incomplete. An ideal case of parallel patterns satisfies, according to this author, the following three requirements:—

(i) the members of the reiterated patterns should be equal in number;

(ii) the members of the reiterated patterns should have identical syntactic functions;

(iii) there should be identical word order in the reiterated
patterns.

When all the three requirements are met the parallelism of patterns is complete. Such a complete parallelism can be found:—

(i) in two or more poetic lines or utterances —

I dare not ask a kiss,

I dare not beg a smile... (Herrick)

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. (Pope) First you borrow. Then you beg. (Hemingway; quoted in 5)

(ii) in groups of utterances —

The ore trains never stop. They dump their loads in the hoppers.

The hoppers are never quiet. They spi 11 the rocks on the belts. (Carter; quoted in 5) Very often, however, there is a partial breach of the three requirements and the repetition of patterning is incomplete.

In this case partial syntactic repetition suggests regularity and at the same time allows variance and enhances unpredictability.

I.M. Astafyeva's research classifies the following typical cases of incomplete repetition of syntactic patterns:—

(1) Lack of coincidence in the number of members:—

(a) the appearance of members that have no correspondence in the preceding pattern —

He reflected without bitterness, but with a modicum of envy, that the wealthy somehow kept going in spite of war and taxes. By the fragrance of Kphlberg's coffee, it was real coffee; by the look of the cream he was pouring in his cup, it was real cream; any by the sweet smell of his cigarette, it was real tobacco. (M altz; quoted in 5)

(b) the appearance of ellipsis in one of the patterns. For instance, the omission of subject and predicate —

For every gun of yours, we have six; for every shell of yours, a dozen. (Heym; quoted in 5)

(2) Lack of coincidence in syntactic functions:—

When they... fed him on their best, and thrust him into their softest chair, they eagerly demanded news. (Cronin; quoted in 5)

(3) Lack of coincidence in the word order.

A typical case of this is known in rhetoric as chiasmus, or reversed syntactic repetition, by which the order of the words in the first pattern is reversed in the second. In other words, chiasmus is a balanced double utterance the second part of which is the reversed image of the first:—

(a) As high as we have mounted in delight

In our dejection do we sink as low. (Wordsworth)

(b) Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down. (Coleridge)

The origin of the term "chiasmus" is as follows: if the

two reversed segments are written one below the other, and lines are drawn between the corresponding members, those lines make the Greek letter % (chi), a diagonal cross:—

DOWN dropt the BREEZE

the SAILS dropt DOWN

In the following example chiasmus converges with ana­diplosis:—

Her face was veiled with a veil of gauze, but her feet were naked. Naked were her feet, and they moved over carpet like little pigeons. (Wilde)

Depending on the position of the identical syntactic parts in parallel patterns, incomplete syntactic repetition can be further categorized into syntactic anaphora, syntactic epi­strophe and syntactic framing:—

(i) Syntactic anaphora:

In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents? (Twain)

(ii) Syntactic epistrophe:

He will come to her in yellow stockings, and His a colour she abhors, and cross-garter'd, a fashion she detests. (Shakespeare)

(iii) Syntactic framing with complete lexical repetition:
And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion. (Thomas)