Polydictemic unparcellated introductory units of short stories (based on the writings of Katherine Mansfield)

the article discusses the most productive type of beginings of K. Mansefield’s short stories – polydictemic unparcellated introductory units. The purpose of the study is to identify the text–organizing potential of this structural-semantic type of beginings. The leading role in the structural and semantic organization of the polydictemic beginning is performed, as a rule, by the first dicteme. Each dicteme has sufficient but relative thematic independence. All of them are subordinated to the development of a common theme and are built into a logical chain of narration. This ensures the integration of information blocks – dictems and the functioning of the polydictemic introductory unit as a whole. The arrangement of several dictemes within a single paragraph contributes to the formation of complementary semantics, which forms the basis of the connections between dictemes in the introductory unit. The paper shows that in her novels K. Mansfield uses beginnings of this type to initiate a thematically complex narrative, which touches on a person’s deep feelings, his unexpected emotional impulses, forcing the reader to carefully analyze even the mundane phenomena of the surrounding world.

dicteme, polydictemic introductory unit, compositional speech form, parcellation, complementary semantics, reported speech