Are You suprised ?

Decomposition of Set phrases deals with linguistic fusions (i.e. set phrases whose meaning is understood only from the combination as a whole. E.g. to pull a person’s leg = to make a joke at him). The SD of decomposition of fused set phrases consists in reviving the independent meanings, which make up the component parts of the fusion.

E.g. I don’t mean to say that I know of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. (Dickens) /here we see decomposition of the phrase ‘as dead as a door-nail’/
5. SYNTACTIC EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES
5.1. Stylistic Syntax and Its Concern
Stylistic Syntax concerns itself with the expressive potential of syntax, i.e. with how the expressive values of syntax are used for a stylistic effect. Syntax as a branch of language science studies a set of rules governing sentence constructions, arrangements of sentence elements, types of relations between words, word-combinations, sentences, supra-phrasal units, etc. They belong to the communicative side of the language, i.e. they serve the purpose of human communication (‘what to say’). Beyond this communicative side lies the emotive side (‘how to say’).

In traditional Stylistics all syntactic structures aimed at expressiveness are called figures of speech.

Sentences vary according to the type of communication and their structure.

According to the type of communication sentences are classified into the interrogative, declarative, imperative, exclamatory.

Exclamatory sentences carry expressiveness as their inherent quality. They are marked by a peculiar word-order, structure and emotive intonation.

Declarative, interrogative and imperative sentences may also acquire an emotional tone marked by emphatic intonation in speech and by exclamatory marks in writing.

E.g. I must swim!

The structural syntactic aspect is sometimes regarded as the crucial issue in stylistic analysis, although the peculiarities of syntactic arrangement are not so conspicuous as the lexical and phraseological properties of the utterance.

The examination of syntax provides a deeper insight into the stylistic aspect of utterances. I.R. Galperin groups all figures of speech according to:

1. 
   Compositional patterns of syntactic arrangement
   

• 
  Stylistic inversion
  
• 
  Detached construction
  
• 
  Parallel construction
  
• 
  Suspense
  
• 
  Climax (Gradation)
  
• 
  Anticlimax
  
• 
  Antithesis
  

2.