Stylistics of Modern English

Kapustina Katya 12- MU

STYLISTICS OF MODERN ENGLISH

MODULE TEST

1. Choose the right completion of the statement:

        Stylistics regards language units of

        a) lexical and syntactic levels;

        b) phonological and morphological levels;

        c) all levels.

2. Complete the statement:

        In linguistics two types of information (meaning) are distinguished: primary denotative(explicit) and secondary connotative(implicit) .

3. What type of information do the following subtypes (stylistic, emotive, expressive) refer to?

4. Match the following definition to the correct notion: “a subsystem of the principles, extralinguistic circumstances, and the effect of the usage of phonetic, morphological, lexical, and syntactic language means of expressing human thoughts and emotions”:

        1) norm;         2) image;         3) style.

5. Match the types of linguistic context to their characteristics: 

1) microcontext, -     b) a context of a single utterance;

2) macrocontext, -    c) a context of a paragraph in a text.

3) megacontext  -      a) a context of a chapter, a story, or the whole book;

6. Match the notions (alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia) to their definitions.

        a) a combination of speech sounds which aims at imitating sounds produced by nature, people or animals;   -  onomatopoeia

        b) a deliberate repetition of acoustically similar vowels aimed at creating a specific effect; - assonance

        c) a deliberate repetition of acoustically similar sounds and sound combinations. -alliteration

7. Identify examples of alliteration in the following:

        The right reaction.  America is furious. But it should learn from its mistakes in the past decade and stick to its own rules.

8. Identify examples of assonance in the following extracts:

        a) Clots and plots.

        b) The best or the rest. British schoolchildren are falling farther behind those elsewhere.

c) Agreeing to disagree. Collective cabinet responsibility bumps up against coalition politics.

9. Identify examples of onomatopoeia in the following magazine headlines:

        a) Not to Be Sniffed At.

        b) Kicking the Can Down the Road.

        c) To whir into Life

10. Give a one-sentence definition of transposition.

Transposition is a divergence between the traditional usage of a neutral word and its situational (stylistic) usage.

11. What is the difference between occasional words and neologisms?

Neologisms are a newly coined word or phrase or a new meaning for an existing word, or a word borrowed from another language. New coinages occur in the case where people have a necessity somehow to name new objects or to express different attitude to already existing word

The notion of ‘ occasionalisms ’ is connected with the frequency of their usage. Such words are usually referred to as ‘occasional’ or ‘nonce-words’. Most of them do not live long. They are not meant to live long. They are, as it were, coined for use at the moment of speech, and therefore possesses a peculiar property – that of temporariness. The given word or meaning holds only in the given context and is meant only to ‘serve the occasion’.