Syntactic Relations Reflected by Word Order in "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger and "Fates and Furies" by L. Groff

Abstract

The research features syntactic structure in the twentieth century "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger and the twenty first century "Fates and Furies" by L. Groff. The research objective was to study the nature of syntactic relations expressed by word order in speech of narrators and characters. The paper outlines the rules of word order in the English sentence and reviews related studies in the field of syntax. The author analyzed the syntactic structure of sentences in the speech of narrators and characters in the two novels. The analysis was based on the descriptive method and techniques of observation, interpretation, comparison, and generalization. There were numerous examples of omission of auxiliary verbs in interrogative sentences in characters' speech, as well as interrogative sentences with affirmative structure. In "The Catcher in the Rye", affirmative sentences obecame interrogative with the help of interjections eh and ah. Both novels contained sentences where adverbial modifiers, objects, or attributes preceded the main parts – in the narrators' speech. A lot of one-member and contextually incomplete sentences were used to describe events and personages in both novels. In "The Catcher in the Rye", the narrator's speech revealed few cases of violations of word order rules, mostly in sentences with direct word order. The characters' speech appeared to contain much more cases of word order violations, since the novel features colloquial speech of twentieth century American teenagers. The speech of adult personages was characterized by correct word order. In "Fates and Furies", the narrator's speech demonstrated a significant number of elliptical sentences where auxiliary verb to be was omitted in simple verbal predicate with the verb in Present Continuous, as well as in compound nominal predicate and in passive voice. A comparative study of syntactic structure contributed to a deeper understanding of the nature of syntactic relations reflected by word order in the English sentence, grammatical structure of the English language, and popular types of sentences. In addition, the study showed the way native speakers express their ideas and thoughts by linguistic means and violate linguistic norms. The results can be used in various grammar courses and compiling textbooks.

Keywords

• linguistics
• syntax
• communicative goal
• pragmatics of a sentence
• word order
• inversion
• fiction
• narrator' speech
• characters' speech