Syntactic-Stylistic Features of Elliptical Sentences in Literary Texts

• Main Author: Danijela Radojević
• Format: Article
• Language: Croatian
• Published: Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje 2016-01-01
• Series: Rasprave: Časopis Instituta za Hrvatski Jezik i Jezikoslovlje
• Subjects: elliptical sentences; ellipse; style; expressive syntax; nominative sentences; reticention parceling syntax-stylistic
• Online Access: http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/262043
• ISSN: 1331-6745; 1849-0379

This paper presents the syntactic structure and and stylistic characteristics of the elliptical sentences in the literature essays based on examples from Montenegrin prose between the two world wars. Analysis covered all the phenomena in the domain of expressive syntax based on deviation of usual sentence construction order caused by its simplification, i.e. intonation division and independence of the sentence parts: ellipse as a syntactic figure of deduction, nominative sentences considered subtype of ellipse, as well as incomplete statements presented through reticention. This paper also highlights the relatively new phenomenon of expressive syntax – parceling, meaning realization of one sentence in more textual units, as one of the linguistic universality and very frequent mean of organizing statements in the language of modern writers. Deviation from principles of traditional sentence order by simplifying, keeping only the basic elements and making the parts of the sentence independent is targeted deviation, on purpose, through writer’s intention to stylize its expression. Therefore, incomplete sentences analyzed in this paper could be considered important stylistic-expressive mean in the literary/artistic texts where aesthetic language function has been put in the forefront.