In these words — such is the linguistic nature of stylistic synonyms—, but emotive meaning will be the prevailing one.

Emotional climax is mainly found in sentences, more rarely in longer syntactical units. This is natural. Emotional charge cannot hold long. As becomes obvious from the analysis of the above examples of cli­matic order, the arrangement of the component parts calls for parallel construction which, being a kind of syntactical repetition, is frequently accompanied by lexical repetition.

The indispensable constituents of climax:

a) the distributional constituent: close proximity of the component parts arranged in increasing order of importance or significance;

b) the syntactical pattern: parallel constructions with possible lexical

repetition;

c) the connotative constituent: the explanatory context which helps the reader to grasp the gradation

There is a device which is called anticlimax. The ideas expressed may be arranged in ascending order of significance, or they may be poetical or elevated, but the final one, which the reader expects to be the culminating one, as in climax, is trifling or farcical. There is a sudden drop from the lofty or serious to the ridiculous. A typical example is Aesop's fable "The Mountain in Labour."

"In days of yore, a mighty rumbling was heard in a Mountain. It was said to be in labour, and multitudes flocked together, from far and near, to see what

Билет 32.

In order to characterize a thing or phenomenon from a specific point of view, it may be necessary not to find points of resemblance or associa­tion between it and some other thing or phenomenon, but to find points of sharp contrast, that is, to set one against the other, for example: "A saint abroad, and a devil at home" (Bunyan) "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." (Milton)

A line of demarcation must be drawn between logical opposition and stylistic opposition. Any opposition will be based on the contrast­ing features of two objects. These contrasting features are represented in pairs of words which we call antonyms, provided that all the prop­erties of the two objects in question may be set one against another, as 'saint' —'devil', 'reign'—'serve', 'hell'—'heaven'.

Many word-combinations are built up by means of contrasting pairs, as up and down, inside and out, from top to bottom and the like.

Stylistic opposition, which is given a special name, the term antithesis, is of a different linguistic nature: it is based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pairs, as in:

"Youth is lovely, age is lonely,

Youth is fiery, age is frosty;" (Longfellow)

It is not only the semantic aspect which explains the linguistic nature of antithesis, the structural pattern also plays an important role. Antith­esis is generally moulded in parallel construction. The antagonistic features of the two objects or phenomena are more easily perceived when they stand out in similar structures. This is particularly advantageous when the antagonistic features are not inherent in the objects in question but imposed on them. The structural design of antithesis is so important it would produce.

It must be remembered, however, that so strong is the impact of the various stylistic devices, that they draw into their orbit stylistic ele­ments not specified as integral parts of the device. As we have pointed out, this is often the case with the epithet. The same concerns antith­esis. Sometimes it is difficult to single out the elements which distin­guish it from logical opposition.

Antithesis is a device bordering between stylistics and logic. The extremes are easily discernible but most of the cases are intermediate. However, it is essential to distinguish between antithesis arid what is termed contrast. Contrast is a literary (not a linguistic) device based on logical opposition between the phenomena set one against an­other.