Single-dicteme unparcellated introductory unit in the short stories by K. Mansfield

the paper analyzes the monodictemic unparcellated introductory units in the literary works of the famous British short story writer Katherine Mansfield. A monodictemic unparcellated introductory unit is a structurally uncomplicated elementary type of the beginnings of a literary work, graphically framed in one paragraph and united by one microtheme. The introductory segment of the short story is considered on the concept of a dicteme, which has a specific textual function. Scientific research in the field of paradigmatic syntax, one of the directions of which was the doctrine of the dictemic organization of the text, opened up additional possibilities for studying the individual style of the author of a literary work. Thus, the work allows us to look at the problem of describing the writer’s individual style from a new perspective, considering it from the standpoint of the syntactic theory of the text. This is the novelty of the conducted research. The purpose of this work is to study the text-organizing potential of a single-dicteme unparcellated introductory unit in K. Mansfield’s stories. As a result of the analysis of the practical material, the frequency of single-topic unparcellated introductory units in the works of the English writer was disclosed, structural and thematic variants of the introductory units of this type were identified, the features of their organization were revealed, and their text-organizing potential was described.

dicteme, introductory unit, parcellation, compositional-speech form, expressivness