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E
MPHATIC
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HRASES IN
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ITERARY
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unanimous regarding one of its features: its commenting nature (for example,
Aronen 2005: 248; Duvallon – Routarinne 2001: 136).
Parenthesis naturally belongs to the scope of the study of spoken language
(see, for example, Routarinne 2003), but on the other hand, the speech in fic-
tion is merely an illusion of speech created by the author. Thus, the study of
spoken language cannot be applied as such to the analysis of text fragments in-
cluding dialogues, monologues and the first-person narrator’s voice. Nonethe-
less, there is some convergence between spoken and written speech.
A parenthetical addition is usually separated from the surrounding
text by
means of punctuation marks: dashes, commas and, occasionally, brackets. In
literary texts, however, the transition to parenthetical additions is not always
indicated to the reader. This may be due to an error or to stylistic reasons. On
occasion, the writer may use the lack of punctuation marks to illustrate that
prosodic signs, for example, those relating to a change in intonation or stress,
are also not found in the speech to indicate the beginning of a parenthetical
addition. Instead, this addition is integrated into speech without intermission.
Duvallon and Routarinne (2001: 125) remark that prosodic markings also do
not appear to be necessary features of the parenthesis in conversational
speech, citing the studies conducted by Mondada and Zay (1999) as well as
Blanche-Benveniste (1997: 72–73, 121–123).
2.2. Emphatic Phrases
Emphatic phrases constitute one subcategory of swearing phrases and
other expletives. Their relation to the content of the construction that they are
embedded in can be perceived as commenting on it as an unnecessary affec-
tive addition. However, emphatic phrases do not contain any extraneous
thoughts. In the research material I have analysed in this article, the emphatic
phrases using the jussive construction consist of two components. According
to the electronic version of
Iso suomen kielioppi
(VISK: §1666) this is a
common phenomenon. Furthermore, the subject component frequently uses a
name of a character of religious origin, for example
hitto, piru, jumala
and
lempo
(Hjort 2007: 66). However, occasionally the subject component may
be formed with other words, such as
koira
or
kissa
. The predicate compo-
nent, on the other hand, is a verb in third-person singular imperative, such as
vieköön
,
soikoon
, and
paratkoon
. When the phrase is formed by combining a
subject component that refers to a central character of Christianity,
jumala
or
herra
, with the verbs
parata
* (meaning
parantaa
, ‘to heal’),
varjella,
or
siu-
nata
, it may have originally signified a prayer or a prayer-like appeal. None-