Convergence of parceling and lexical repetition in French and Russian newspaper texts
Parceling is a special way of communicative and stylistic organization. It allows dividing the sentence structure into two or more parts: the main part and the parcel (parcels). The parcel may contain the most significant communicative and pragmatic information. Parceling allows the author to mark out the required part of the sentence to focus the attention and intensify the efforts of the recipient aimed at understanding the importance of this subject. In the case of convergence the impact of parceling improves thanks to the fusion of the potentials of stylistic devices the author uses. The study of the convergent potential of parceling in comparative aspects on the material of distantly related languages with significant differences of the grammatical system, able to restrict the use of certain devices, is of interest to linguistics. The analysis of French and Russian corpuses of newspaper texts reveals the great opportunities of parceling in stylistic convergence. The convergence of parceling and lexical repetition is especially effective and efficient. If parceling is regarded as a destructive device, graphically tearing the linear sequence of word forms in a sentence, repetition is a constructive device playing the role of a connector and providing a local cohesion of the text. The combination of these opposites creates the effect of surprise. Parceled repetition emphasizes a mental fragment of the text, attracts attention and limits the scope or a particular aspect of its consideration. The author of the article has identified, described and compared different species of parceled repetitions, actively operating in the French and Russian newspaper speech: contact and distant, common and non-circular, epiphoric, radial and successive. Performing the general, peculiar to all the species of the parceled text structure, function of highlighting of a significant fragment from other information, focusing the recipient''s attention on it, each species of parcel-repetition accomplishes its specific function. In addition, a comparative analysis revealed some significant differences in the use of different species of parceled repetitions. The distinctive features of the French corpus are the absence of structures with parcels: epiphoric, successive and non-developed repetitions, and the presence of parcels-repetitions with demonstrative pronouns. This specificity is due to the peculiarities of the grammatical system of the French language.