STYLISTIC MORPHOLOGY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The main unit of the morphological level is a morpheme — the smallest meaningful unit which can be singled out in a word There are two types of morphemes: root morphemes and affix ones. Morphology chiefly deals with forms, functions and meanings of affix morphemes.

Affix morphemes in English are subdivided into word-building and form-building morphemes. In the latter case affixation may be: 1) synthetical (boys, lived, comes, going) 2) analytical (has invited, is invited, does not invite); 3) based on the alteration of the root vowel (write - wrote)', 4) suppletive (go - went).

There are few language (or paradigmatic) synonyms among English morphemes and only some of them form stylistic oppositions, e.g. he lives- he does live. Come! -Do come! Don't forget- Don't you forget This scarcity of morphological EM which is predetermined by the analytical character of the English language is compensated by a great variety of SD.

Morphological SD as a deliberate shift in the fixed distribution of morphemes can be created by means of: a) the violation of the usual combinability of morphemes within a word, e.g. the plural of uncountable nouns (sands, waters, times), or the Continuous forms of the verbs of sense perception (to be seeing, to be knowing, to be feeling): b) the violation of the contextual distribution of morphemes, which is called form transposition.

SD BASED ON THE USE OF NOUNS.

The invariant grammatical meaning of the noun, that of substance, is realised through grammatical categories of number, case, definiteness / indefiniteness which can be used for stylistic purposes.

Such SD may be based on a) repeating the same words in a syntactical construction, e.g. women are women, or b) using metaphorically nouns which belong to different lexico-grammatical classes, e.g. He is a devil with the women (S.Barstow).

In the opposition of singular:: plural thelatter is a marked member, and, accordingly, the possibilities of its stylistic use are greater. Nevertheless, singular forms can also acquire stylistic meaning , e.g. to shoot dark, to hunt pig. The formant 's' as the marker of the category of possessiveness constantly widens the sphere of its usage and its combinability. It frequently combines with inanimate and abstract nouns, e.g. kitchen's work, the plan's failure. Sometimes it refers to a word group or a sentence, e.g. The blonde I had been dancing with's name was Bemice Crabs or Krebs (J.Salinger). As a result, the opposition N1 of N2 : : N2's N1 loses its stylistic character.