the verbless clauses as a stylistic marker

Introduction
1.1 Problem
Verbless clauses offer one concise formal means of writing which is especially suitable for the purpose of writing where brevity and economy are sought. The important question is how far such verbless constructions can function as a stylistic marker serving to differentiate one author s style from another i.e. Woolf s, , Joyce s, Mansfield s, and Synge s, Daviot s and Priestley s style. This is the question which this study tries to give an adequate answer in terms of statistical analysis and methods.


1.2 Aim
This study aims at investigating the viability of verbless clauses functioning as a stylistic marker in the works of Woolf, Joyce, Mansfield, and Synge, Daviot and Priestly.

1.3 Hypotheses
It is hypothesized that:
1. The authorial use of the verbless forms by Virginia Woolf constitutes one distinctive stylistic marker in her works.
2. Woolf uses the highest density of verbless clauses in the data, i.e. more than, Joyce, Mansfield, Synge, Daviot, and Priestly.




1.4 Procedure
The researcher adopts the following procedures:
1. Presenting the verbless constructions with their definitions, forms and functions, i.e. uses.
2. Investigating the frequencies of the verbless constructions in the selected data and analyzing them. This will be done through the selection of one work from each writer. To ensure that the rates of recurrence allow objective comparison, the works selected are equal in size.

1.5 Limit
This study limits itself to the works of Woolf, Joyce, Mansfield, Synge, Daviot, and Priestly. These are: Woolf’s Kew Gardens, , Joyce’s Eveline, Mansfield’s Millie, Synge’s Riders to the Sea, Daviot’s The Pen of My Aunt, and Priestley s Mother’s Day.
The reason behind choosing these two different narrative texts (short stories versus one-act plays) is that both have common features where economy and brevity are required.Furthermore,the correlation of variant according to genre can lead to contrastive studies , as comparing the densities of one linguistic feature in short stories with that of other narrative texts, like novels biographies ,plays,autoniographies,etc.

1.6 Value
It is hoped that the stylistic analysis of the data conducted in this study will cast a valuable light on the characteristics and techniques of writing used by those particular writers. Such an attempt will be made to combine both linguistic and literary discrimination by investigating how the linguistic differentials are related to the techniques of writing.