英语修辞与写作·18.4　句子的强调　（Sentence　Emphasis）

18.4　句子的强调 （Sentence Emphasis）

18.4A　句子强调的含义

1） 句子的强调指把句中表示重要意义的成份或词语安排在句中较为显著的位置。一般说来，句首和句尾都是受强调的位置。请看下面两个例句：

Her hands were always moving, pushing her glasses back up her slim nose, patting her hair into place, tapping a non-existent ash off the end of her cigarette.

When my father had been wheeled into the recovery room, and the heart monitor and the glucose tubes had been disconnected, I finally relaxed.

（Francis L. Fennell）

上述例1为渐进句（参见7.3A），例2为掉尾句（参见7.2A），分别强调句首和句尾部分。

2） 对内容加以夸张，对某些词语加下横线，改粗体或斜体，以及使用感叹号，等等，都能起到强调作用。但这里所讲的强调主要指对句子结构的安排和调整，使作者想着重表达的思想得到突出，做到次要内容服务于主要内容，有轻有重，层次分明。

18.4B　句子强调的几种手段

1） 除上面18.4A2提到的以外，还可通过调整句中成分的位置的方式强调某个句子成份。例如：

The American girl drove her red car to school last semester.

若要强调句中的女孩是美国人，则可作如下调整：

The girl, an American, drove her red car to school last semester.

或

The girl, who was an American, drove her red car to school ...

又如：

She might never see him again if the plane came late.

若把条件状语从句提前，或者在主句与从句之间加上破折号，都可使原句的意思得到强调：

If the plane came late, she might never see him again.

或：

She might never see him again — if the plane came late.

2） 重复（参见7.4B）、省略（参见7.4A） 和平行对照结构 （参见16.3） 的使用，都是达到句子强调的有效方式。例如：

And this hell was, simply, that he had never in his life owned anything — not his wife, nor his house, nor his child — which could not, at any instant, be taken from him by the power of white people.

（James Baldwin）

We always called her old Maggie although she wasn't old really. About forty-seven, or forty-eight. No more.

又如：

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice, ... Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

（Martin Luther King Jr.）

练习十八　（Exercise Eighteen）

I. Preview Questions:

1. Can you tell the difference between Correct Sentence and Effective Sentence?

2. “Unity means oneness, the combination of all elements to form a single unit.” What do you think of this statement?

3. What should be done when a sentence lacks unity?

4. Is it true that sentence coherence requires that all elements be arranged in a clear, logical order so that it is easy for the reader to follow the writer's train of thought?

5. Can you tell any factor in grammar that will affect sentence coherence?

6. Can you tell any rhetorical factor that will affect sentence coherence?

7. What positions in the sentence are regarded as most prominent?

8. Can you indicate with an example how emphasis can be achieved in the sentence?

II. Read and comment the following statements:

1. For a sentence that lacks unity, there are three possible remedies: a） Delete any phrase or clause that is unrelated to the central thought; b） Subordinate one statement to another to show the logical relationship; and c） Separate seemingly disconnected statements, making two sentences, and bring in material that will provide a logical link between them.

2. Coherence is an essential virtue in expository writing, in which everything is tied together clearly and logically so as to help your reader to follow your ideas. These four points are necessary to achieve coherence: a） Use some logical method of organization; b） Structure your sentences in such a way that the sequence in which they are arranged links them to each other; c） Use transitional devices to connect sentences and paragraphs; and d） Repeat a key word or phrase to remind your reader of the important points of your essay.

3. Emphasis is used to indicate the relative importance of the points you are making, so that your reader recognizes the most important as most important, the less important as less important, the incidental as incidental. A lack of emphasis means a failure in guidance; misplaced emphasis means serious confusion. There are various devices to achieve appropriate emphasis, which include a） Proportion — Give the point you want to emphasize the space and development its importance calls for; b） Position — Generally speaking, the most emphatic position in a sentence, a paragraph, or a full essay is the end （hence the danger of leaving the final point undeveloped）, and the second most important is the beginning, therefore any negligence of these two positions should be avoided; c） Separation — Use a comma, a colon, or a dash to set off part of a sentence and thereby emphasize it, lightly or heavily, or begin a separate sentence or a new paragraph to achieve the same purpose; d） Repetition — Appropriate repetition of certain significant words or ideas in different wording, or perhaps in figurative expressions, can gain emphasis; e） Economy — Pay special attention to the expression of the ideas that deserve major emphasis, while stripping the sentences of any verbiage that blurs their clarity and blunts their impact; f） Mechanical devices — Using underlinings, capitals, and exclamation marks for emphasis is necessary from time to time, though various other devices can be used instead, i. e.“It is interesting to note”，“It's John that has been chosen”，“What I'd advise you is ...”, etc.

III. Try and revise the following, wherever you find necessary:

1. For almost ten weeks in January, the coldest month in that area and much colder than many of their home towns, the POWs were kept in an unheated camp at night, the cold caused many deaths and diseases and in particular, the victims were women and children.

2. Such plants to operate successfully had to run at capacity. As they wanted to do this, they needed outlets for their output.

3. Raghaven N. Lyer, writing in The Center Magazine, states that, “There are two kinds of infuriating people. One is the moralist, the other is the legalist. The moralists are infuriating when they want to raise every single issue, however local and specific, to the status of eternal principle; the legalists are infuriating when they want to reduce an important matter of moral principle involving basic human rights and human dignity to mere formalism or sheer expediency.”

4. Coherence means sticking together. A paragraph is coherent and the sentences are woven together or flow into each other. The reader then moves easily from one sentence to the next and reads the paragraph as an integrated unit, which is not a collection of separate sentences.

5. College is very different from high school. The professors talk a great deal more and give longer homework assignments. This interferes with your social life. It may even cost you a girlfriend. Girls don't like to be told that you have to stay home to study when they want to go to a show or dancing. So they find some other boy who doesn't have to study all the time. Another way in which college is different is the examinations. ...

参考答案

Ⅲ. 1. For almost ten weeks in January, the coldest month in that area, the POWs were kept in an unheated camp at night, which caused many deaths and diseases. Most of the victims were women and children.

2. Such plants to operate successfully had to run at capacity. To run at capacity they needed outlets for their whole output. （Thurman Arnold）

3. Note: Both “the legalist” and “the moralist” should be kept singular in the whole paragraph.

4. Coherence means sticking together. A paragraph is coherent when the sentences are woven together or flow into each other. The reader then moves easily from one sentence to the next and reads the paragraph as an integrated unit, not a collection of separate sentences.

5. Note: The paragraph starts with a good topic sentence, supported by the second. Then, however, the writer begins to slide away from his subject. Sentences 3 and 4 might be allowed if they were subordinated, but 5 and 6 lose contact. In sentence 7 the writer tacitly acknowledges that he has wandered, throwing out a long transitional lifeline to haul the reader back to the subject. It is advisable to get rid of irrelevance and revise the paragraph like this:

College is very different from high school. The professors talk a great deal more and give longer homework assignments,which interfere with your social life. College examinations, too, are different. ...