Pause as a Means of Creating Subtext in Komi Prose Works

Abstract

In modern linguistics, scientists are very interested in the study of sounding speech and the specifics of its intonation. The paper focuses on one of the components of intonation, namely the pause, which plays an important role both in spontaneous live speech and in the written text. Its special place among other elements of intonation lies in its key role in ensuring the communicative effectiveness of the transmitted message. The paper deals with the study and description of the pause in Komi prose works. The object of our research is the pause as an element of intonation, capable of carrying an important semantic load in speech. The main objectives of the study are to analyze the motivational side of pausal inclusions, identify the means of transmitting pauses in the text of a prose work and classify them in a functional and semantic aspect. The sources of the empirical base of the work were the texts of the original Komi fiction, on the basis of which a rich textual material was collected for the study of intonation features, including pauses characterizing the character’s speech. The text of the artwork reflects the specifics of the use of linguistic means of transmitting pauses in the speech of the interlocutors. The study allowed us to conclude that for the most part they are transmitted through author’s remarks, word breaks, their repetition in the character’s remark, font highlights of lexemes, speech-like placeholders, as well as the use of graphic, including punctuation, features in the text. When classifying pauses, their characteristics, multi-level parameters, such as position in relation to semantic connection, physical nature, and function were taken into account. The analysis allowed us to identify many types of pauses used in the text. A distinctive feature of each of these varieties is their spontaneity and unpredictable nature. The author’s style, the unique sound organization of speech created by writers for their characters, and the author’s attitude to the images formed have a significant impact on the representation of the linguistic characteristics of pauses in the characters’ speech.