Can anyone explain the difference, please, between syllepsis and zeugma?
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05-14-03, 06:27 AM
FredPuli
I found one learned writer who thought they were the same, calling the device (quote ) 'syllepsis ( or zeugma)' so this subject can be confusing! However,the examples he gave are 'He lost his way and his temper' and 'She was in the army and a difficult position'. These are both examples of syllepsis. A historic one is from Benjamin Franklin, 'We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately'. In each example the same verb is used but is understood differently in the two parts. Syllepsis is often used humorously in English. Zeugma is 'the ellipsis (= omission) of a verb in which one verb is used to govern several clauses' or ''two different words linked to a verb which is strictly appropriate to only one'. Let's use the example given by the writer of the second of those definitions quoted: 'Neither Mars by his sword nor war's fire shall burn the record of your memory'.Here the sword could not burn any record ( whether a real document or in a metaphor ) ; it is strictly inappropriate to use 'burn' for both; the appropriate verb to describe what a sword does is missing.So in syllepsis the verb is used with two different meanings both of which are associated with it; in zeugma one verb is used even though it is not appropriate in one case ( and the correct verb has been omitted).

[This message was edited by FredPuli on 05-14-03 at 06:37 AM.]

[This message was edited by FredPuli on 05-14-03 at 06:42 AM.]

05-14-03, 09:02 AM
Colin, Paris, France
FredPuli, I'm very grateful for this, which is the clearest expression of the difference between the two I've yet seen. I'd welcome a few modern-day examples of zeugma though - which appears to be less common than syllepsis if I've grasped the thrust of what you've written. Thanks again.

05-14-03, 09:45 AM
newnickname
The Collins English Dictionary suggests a different difference. Zeugma - a word modifying or governing two others, although maybe inappropriate for one of them. It may be appropriate for both, but in different senses. The example given is Dickens' "Mr. Pickwick took his hat and his leave."

(I remember coming across Fowler complaining, in a book he wrote in the 1900's, about this 'comical' effect. I'm not sure exactly of the reference. He felt it was being overused, and had never been very funny to begin with.)

Collins suggests that syllepsis is where a word is made to cover two syntactical functions. "She and they have promised to come."

So, possibly, zeugma is fooling around with meanings of words, and syllepsis with the grammar.

05-14-03, 10:13 AM
maiku
Here is another well-known example from Dicken's Pickwick Papers of what has usually been considered a zeugma: She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair.

Besides its wonderful comic effect, this is an interesting example grammatically, because it has to do with the clash of two conjoined noun phrases used together as objects of the same preposition, in. Indeed, it is not necessary at all for conjoined nouns to be governed by verbs for a zeugma to happen.

To attempt to divide figures of this sort into two mutually exclusive classes--one labeled zeugma and the other labeled syllepsis-- seems profitless to me, especially if it is claimed that the difference lies in the clash being between meanings in the first case and syntactic forms in the latter, which some dictionaries I've looked at attempt to do. In the example above, the conjunction is odd in both ways at once, and this is most often the case.

However, there are some cases where the oddity might be described as almost purely syntactic, as in he or his friends were responsible. In Webster's Unabridged, this example is cited under the definition for syllepsis.
This seems to agree far more closely with newnickname than it does with FredPuli, who seems to have it just the other way around (as nearly as I can understand his answer). Wink

05-14-03, 02:14 PM
FredPuli
Now you know ,Colin, why the writer I quoted first saw them as the same thing!The source of the definition given for syllepsis with the example given from Franklin is a list of terms of rhetoric and 'figures of speech' compiled by a classics ( Latin and Ancient Greek) scholar Ross Saife at the University of Kentucky . The second definition of zeugma comes from the same list.(The first is by Professor Grant Williams in 'Studies in Early Modern English Literature') For that Saife gives the 'sword' example which I put into more modern English ( it's from an C18 poem apparently) . He also gives an example in Latin , from Vergil 'Aeneid'. This list was the only one I found which made a clear distinction between the two and was by a scholar of the original language where these terms originate. They come from Ancient Greek rhetoric, the study of the rules of style and grammar for speakers and writers, where the whole subject was first studied.It is an interesting, long list, with definitions and examples; the longest I found. It is at www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/Classics/rhetoric.html#45

05-14-03, 03:22 PM
maiku
It seems to me, Fred, that the difficulty we seem to be having in understanding each other of late is in large part due to your insistence in talking about Greek and Latin, whereas I would prefer to talk about the language, English, in and about which the majority of questions here are being posed.

I'd also like to point out the danger of the etymological fallacy in this connection. However the Greek rhetoricians may have distinguished between terms like syllepsis and zeugma (and I would caution that extant writings by Greeks in the way of linguistic analysis of their own language are often filled with patent absurdities, nor do I ever put so much trust as you in classical scholars explicating these writings at a long historical remove and whose own knowledge of Greek and Latin could hardly be described as amounting to native-speaker proficiency), the fact is that these words are not now commonly distinguished in the way you want to maintain. If they ever really were.

The "definitions" you cited above were at best garbled and muddy, in spite of the eminence of the authorities you then go on to cite as having offered them. This was most particularly so in the use of the word inappropriate. What is that supposed to mean? Breaking some concord rule? Semantic equivocation? Unasked for and unwelcome polysemy? What?

05-14-03, 06:03 PM
FredPuli
Well Maiku what is wrong with the definitions and distinction made and the illustrations given on the site to which I refer above ? That author does not use 'inappropriate' at all so his language is not to be faulted for that reason, at least. The Latin example , from Book Two at line 780, is used elsewhere I see in an exam paper printed on the net. The question there is 'what figure of speech , apart from ellipsis, is used in this line ?' The answer is, naturally, 'zeugma'. (I am sorry that the example includes a gerund by the way ). Here we have figures of speech, not forms of tense or mood that are not used or represented in English, but ways of thought and expression. All languages have them.Why, I wonder, would the scholars who named figures of speech in English choose to use the terms from the rules of rhetoric, with which they were extremely familiar being classically educated, if those terms did not and were not describing the same thing whether it be 'hyperbole', 'metaphor', 'syllepsis' or 'zeugma' but something different? I cannot see any problem here; the Latin example for 'zeugma' is just the same as the English example in that it fits the definition given exactly.

05-14-03, 06:25 PM
maiku

quote:Originally posted by FredPuli:
Well Maiku what is wrong with the definitions and distinction made and the illustrations given on the site to which I refer above ? That author does not use 'inappropriate' at all so his language is not to be faulted for that reason, at least...



True, Fred, the authors you cited didn't use the word inappropriate, literally. What one of the sources you quoted said, literally, was that the verb in a syllepsis (or perhaps in was the zeugma, it was tough to follow) was "strictly appropriate only for one of the nouns." Forgive me for supposing incorrectly that you would yourself easily enough concede that this is equivalent to saying that the verb is inappropriate in some degree to the other noun.

Modern English usage of the terms zeugma and syllepsis, where it attempts to make any distinction at all, is almost totally opposite to the one you claimed above, Fred, with which statement my dictionaries and Newnickname's as well all seem to agree as over and against your classical scholars.

05-14-03, 08:28 PM
newnickname
The New Penguin English Dictionary:

Zeugma - the use of a word to modify or govern two others in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense. She opened the door and her heart to him.

(H.W. and F.G. Fowler in "The King's English" [1906, my favourite bedtime reading] call this kind of thing 'a well-worn pleasantry', and warn against its use. They don't bother to name it.)

Syllepsis - 1. the use of a word to modify or govern syntactically two or more words with only one of which it formally agrees. Neither he nor I knows.

Definition '2.' is essentially the same as for 'zeugma'.

Confusing, eh? That 'neither he nor I knows' is interesting. I could be wrong, of course, but I think it's incorrect.

Here's Betty Azar (a ghastly modern American who probably can't speak Greek, but...): "When two subjects are connected with 'not only....but also', 'either...or' or 'neither...nor', the subject that is closer to the verb determines whether the verb is singular or plural." If we follow that line of thought, the phrase should be 'Neither he nor I know'.

It seems that 'zeugma' tends to be about the sense of the words, and 'syllepsis' about the grammar - but the label actually isn't as important as recognising the potential problem.

[This message was edited by newnickname on 05-14-03 at 08:37 PM.]

[This message was edited by newnickname on 05-14-03 at 08:39 PM.]

05-15-03, 02:14 PM
maiku
I think we are in nearly complete agreement about this one, nnn, except that I'd still like to caution that it is unwise to draw any distinction hastily between difference in sense and difference in grammar.

It is one thing, perhaps, to say that the clash between conjuncts in expressions such as "Neither they nor I were..." is a purely formal, syntactic one, involving strictly only a difference in verb agreement. The dictionaries you and I have both cited seem to want to say this is, if anything, the kind of case where the word syllepsis is more approriate than the word zeugma.

I would agree with that. But when it comes to what I would still like to take as a paradigm case of a zeugma, the matter gets a little cloudier. Let me revert to Dicken's wonderful example

She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair

We could say that the joke (and the figure, whatever we call it) depends here on different senses of the preposition in applied at once to two conjuncts. Of course one cannot be in a sedan chair in the same sense that one is in a flood of tears.

It is possible, though, to conceive of a language in which this very distinction in sense would be marked by some difference in affixes or in agreement, and would thus look like a purely syntactic problem in that language.

But even in English, there is a syntactic difference, though a covert one. Coming home in a taxi is not the same kind of thing as coming home in a certain emotional state of mind, and this fact is reflected in English in purely syntactic ways, as we can see through the following considerations:

If I say "Tearfully, she came home in a taxi," I've fronted an adverbial of manner, which I can do with almost no restriction in English. Note that the same thing applies to "In a flood of tears, she came home in a sedan chair." Dickens didn't write his sentence that way, because it would then merely have been a perfectly ordinary sentence.

Note, however, that the means of transport you use to come home in (or on, maybe) is not anything like the state of mind you come home in, suggesting that adverbials of manner are treated differently, syntactically, from adverbials of means in English syntax. So that saying "In a taxi she came home" is distinctly odd English, whereas sentences like

Tearfully, she came home, or
In a flood of tears, she came home

are in no way exceptionable.

No difference in sense without some difference in syntax, that's my motto. Smile Hence, no real difference between syllepsis and zeugma (at least not on the grounds of some difference between sense and syntax).

[This message was edited by maiku on 05-15-03 at 02:28 PM.]

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