STYLISTIC FUNCTION OF VERBS

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 503.

STYLISTIC FUNCTION OF ADJECTIVES

The only grammatical category of adjectives is the category of comparison. Superlative degree of comparison creates impressiveness itself, but it is more expressive if we use various intensifiers.

e.g. the sweetest baby (of babies)

a foolish wife – a foolish, foolish wife - a most foolish wife – the most foolish of

wives – my wife is foolishness herself …

The category of comparison is spread over the qualitative adjectives. Relative adjectives have no degrees of comparison. When it is used in comparative or superlative degree it creates some stylistic effect.

e.g. You cannot be deader than the dead

Completely “ungrammatical” and thus showing the “low” social status of the speaker are the forms: we (you, they) was; he don't; says I; I (we, you, they) comes,

as well as attempts at regularizing irregular verbs by analogy: he comed; he seed, etc.

The category of tense. The present forms are often used with reference to past or future actions. Here is what we call “historical present”.

e.g. What else do I remember? Let me see. There comes out of the cloud our house,

our house – not new to me, but quite familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the

ground floor is Peggoty's kitchen, opening into a back yard…

The extract reproduced is the author's narrative. Ch.Dickens depicts past events as if they were in the present.

An essentially different stylistic purpose will be observed in the following example. The story is told by a half-educated tramp, who uses high-flown words and expressions intermingled with the illiteracies of a ruffian. In what follows we also observe narration, only the narrator uses present-tense forms of verbs not for visualizing what he tells, but rather because he is ignorant of the difference between present and past tense forms. The stylistic purpose of the writer is to portray the story-teller.

e.g. Just after Morpheus had got both my shoulders to the shuck mattress I hears a

housful of unbecoming and ribald noises like a youngster screeching with green-apple

colics. I opens my door and calls out in the hall for the widow lady, and when she

sticks her head out, I says “Mrs.Peevy, ma'am, would you mind choking off that kid

of yours so that honest people can get their rest?” (O'Henry)