Academic literature on the topic 'Syntactic foregrounding'

Following the introduction of the ideas of Russian Formalists and Prague Structuralists, the foregrounding theory appeared as a new paradigm, based on linguistic models that claimed to provide insight into poetic technique and gain a grasp of the effects generated by this technique in the readers. Thus the article focuses on the analysis of stylistic tools to create the foregrounding effect by means of linguistic parallelism and deviation and their components in the traditional and non-traditional poems by E. E. Cummings. The famous American twentieth century poet, essayist, playwright and painter, he is famous for his very special style of writing, unusual break of lexical, morphological, phonological and syntactic rules. The poetic innovations were created as he skilfully used various types of foregrounding in his poems. E. E. Cummings illustrated all types and aspects of foregrounding that are ever possible, demonstrated their effect on the readers and therefore attracted scholarly attention. By means of it he has contributed the possibility for further development of the foregrounding theory. Hence, in this article the authors offer the outline of theoretical background of foregrounding research as they systematize different approaches to research in the area during last two centuries. On a practical note, the article details the issue of linguistic deviation as a way to create the foregrounding effect and influence the readers’ perception of the poem. The authors hold that deviation can occur at different language levels: morphological, phonological, syntactic, grammatical and lexical. In E. E. Cummings’s poems deviation is demonstrated at all possible language levels in order to emphasize particular information, to bring reader’s attention to a certain fact and it is a powerful tool to generate an effect on readers.

Khoekhoe syntax exhibits an unusually flexible constituent structure. Any constituent with a lexical head can be preposed into the focal initial slot immediately before the PGN-marker that marks the subject position. Two strategies of focalisation by foregrounding need to be distinguished: inversion and fronting. Inversion amounts to an inversion of subject and predicate in their entirety. Such sentences have two readings, though, according to their underlying constituent structure: "predicative" or "copulative". Fronting amounts to the preposing of a lexical constituent into the focal initial slot, with subsequent dislocation of the lexical specification of the subject from that slot.
 
 The present analysis has wider implications, particularly: The generally accepted view that Khoekhoe has coreferential/equational "copulative" sentences of the type NPsubject = NPcomplement is a fallacy. Such sentences actually are sentences with their predicate fronted into the focal initial slot. They amount to cleft constructions.
 
 The fact that the primary focal position is immediately before the PGNmarker of the subject is further independent evidence for the "desentential hypothesis", according to which subject and object NPs in the underlying matrix sentence consist of only an enclitic PGN-marker, and for the claim that Khoekhoe underlyingly is a SVO language, not a SOV language as generally held. By implication these findings affect the analysis of other Central Khoesaan languages.

This article examines the linguistic appropriation and deflection of blame in the witness testimonies and evidence-gathering processes of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) following the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster. It specifically focuses on patterns of stylistic features, such as negation and syntactic foregrounding, which, it is argued, function to encode alternative institutionally congruent stories. It employs schema theory to explore how a ‘hooligan’ narrative was readily invoked and accepted by the SYP. Moreover, it addresses instances of both self-incrimination and the upgrading of police efficacy within statements produced by the South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service (SYMAS), and offers a linguistic analysis that points to police involvement in the construction of the SYMAS testimonies.

AbstractThe Canek manuscript is written in a distinctive linguistic style, probably a local variant of Spanish influenced by Yucatec Maya and archaic forms of Spanish. It also reflects a curiously ambivalent perspective on the Itza king Canek, at once aligning him with the pagan Indians and suggesting an affinity with Saint Francis. Like many other colonial texts, the four extant folia of this manuscript show a blending of verbal genres. This paper presents a discourse analysis of the manuscript, demonstrating that it is organized according to a systematic rhetorical structure based on syntactic foregrounding, poetic parallelism and thematic development. Placed in the context of other colonial documents, this one displays the cultural and linguistic ambivalence of its author.

The stylistic quirkiness of Ulysses is not only inconceivable but also unfathomable. The meanderings of speech from the opacity of narrative through chunks of silent thought to adopted discursive conventions do not leave the reader with the impression that they are facing a transparent narrative. On the contrary, the prose epic of Ulysses subverts expectations concerning “mood”, voice and discursive conventions, yielding threads of lyrically opaque speech. As these threads intertwine and cut across one another, a poetic fabric develops that diverts attention to itself and reveals how prose can foster lyrical foregrounding. The “Eumaeus” episode presents textual constructions that employ marked conventions of speech and eminent syntactic arrangements besides the indeterminacy of “mood” and voice to defamiliarize correlations of perception, thought and emotion. Accordingly, the work demonstrates that the thickly woven opacity of a multifarious fabric is indeed capable of leaving a lyrically subtle imprint on the attentive reader.

While there has been a sustained interest in conducting stylistic studies on fiction, specifically novels and short stories, the literature about stylistic analysis of flash fiction as a literary genre remains scant. Thus, the present study attempts to conduct a lexical and syntactic analysis of Ian Rosales Casocot’s “There Are Other Things Beside Brightness And Light.” The analysis was anchored in two of the four linguistic and stylistic categories proposed by Leech and Short (2007), namely lexical and grammatical. To communicate the narrator’s traumatic experience, the following lexical categories were found: words that evoke the main character’s recollected sensations, particularly visual; a Latin expression, and slang words; concrete nouns providing access to the feelings of the main character; abstract nouns connoting psychological or emotional processes; and adjectives depicting sensory imageries and representing, along with some verbs, psychological states that carry negative connotations. Stative verbs vis-à-vis dynamic ones echo the impressions of attachment and detachment, and memory in the story, which link to the adverbs of manner in the text. On the other hand, these grammatical features contributed to text interpretation: cumulative or loose sentences depicting a series of rapid thoughts of the narrator who recalls a traumatic experience; mini-paragraphs, i.e., text fragmentation, foregrounding the theme of the narrative; a verb-tense shift from past to future, and the demonstrative pronouns that and this representing the struggle of the narrator to escape from the vexatious memory of pain and trauma; and the em dash paving the way for the narrator’s emotional rumination. The stylistic analysis, particularly lexical and syntactic, provides a more objective and profound understanding of the underlying meanings of the FF under study.

The two characteristics of the passive voice found in the North Russian dialect and in other Circum-Baltic languages, the accusative case of the patient or theme as an argument of a verb with passive morphology and intransitive verbs passivized raise a number of related questions. The author of the present paper explores the issues under discussion from an areal-historical perspective, concluding that the aforementioned languages have a tendency for the agent to be the same element as the subject and the patient or theme to be the same element as the (direct) object of the sentence. In the North Russian dialect, we can see an example where the above fact holds true irrespective of whether the verb has an active or a passive morphology as the theme of the sentence assumes the accusative case regardless of whether it is an argument of a verb in the active or in the passive voice.The question as to what lexical elements can function as subjects is itself interesting. Moreover, there seems to be a correlation between what level of abstraction the syntactic category of subject has reached in a language and the existence of a pure passive mean- ing. The less abstract the category of subject is, as in case of Circum-Baltic languages, the farther structures with a passive morphology seem to be from a pure passive meaning. In languages such as English, however, where virtually any noun can function as a subject, there seems to be a pure passive meaning and there is only one morphological way of form- ing passive sentences.The nature of linguistic similarities found in genetically less related languages spoken in the same area has been given a number of varied accounts. The most salient of them ap- pears to be B. Drinka’s explanation based on the influence of Western European languages on ones spoken in the East of the area where once the Hanseatic League existed in the middle ages and I. Seržant’s theory concerning the foregrounding of the agent as passive structures with a stative interpretation gradually assumed a dynamic one.In fact, participles in the North Russian dialect ending in -n / -t can express a dynam- ic, that is, eventive interpretation with a perfect meaning and can even co-occur with the -sja / -s’ postfix, the latter phenomenon being absolutely unimaginable in Standard Russian, where the two affixes are in complementary distribution. The author assumes that the topic should be studied from the perspective of sociology and cultural anthropology as well since linguistic similarities and differences often reflect similarities and differences in thinking beyond the realm of linguistics.

This study stylistically analyzes a poem, "The Innocent Killings", by an anonymous poet, Jasmine. The poem has been analyzed at morphological, lexico-syntactical, and graphological levels where thematic and foregrounding elements have been used. Moreover, the unique deviation and parallelism have been taken as a suggestion to the spirit of the age. Various stylistic features in the context of brutal terrorism have been employed in the poem to convey the denser ideas and traumatic sufferings of the nation. The researchers also explored the unique structure of the poem carrying different moods and troops with proper choice of dictions in each portion. The stylistic techniques in the poem move parallel to the tone of the mood, such as; the use of progressive verbs, abstract nouns, symbol device like "Jasmine", and lack of the main verb in the last three lines of the poem shows a failure to defend the nation from terrorist attacks

The aim of this essay is to do a stylistic analysis on Te Deum Laudamus. Stylistic techniques and methods are employed for this task under the aspects of syntactic semantic, phonological and graphological patterns. Effects of linguistic foregrounding are also highlighted in the paper. The analysis revealed that the poet made use of stylistic and linguistic tools not only to deepen his message but also to make it effective and aesthetic.
 
 <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0865/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

This study is premised on the assumption that foregrounding is the dominant feature of poetry. Such an assumption informs this study to the extent that it examines the role of foregrounding in isiXhosa modem poetry. Foregrounding, as an unusual or deviant usage of language, manifests itself as: metaphorical language, foregrounded sound, syntactic foregrounding and the variation of rhythmico-metrical structure. These are called foregrounding techniques. However, this study deals only with the first three foregrounding techniques. Qangule's poetry furnishes this study with examples that are used to illustrate that foregrounding plays a significant role in isiXhosa modem poetry. The foregrounding techniques depict, illustrate, dramatize and suggest the meaning of a poem. They also have the ability to do that in a collaborative manner. Such a claim is evidenced by the comprehensive analysis and interpretation of the poem Ukubonga (To praise).<br>African Languages<br>M.A. (African Languages)