Means of coherence in interrogative utterances in ‘Waterland’ by G. Swift

The paper considers relations between two fundamental linguistic categories, which are interrogativity and text coherence. In particular, the problem of representation of the coherence category in interrogative utterances is being analyzed. The aim of the article is to study the means of coherence used in interrogative utterances in Waterland by G. Swift. This novel was chosen to provide material for investigation as it is characterized by explicit interrogation which serves to facilitate cohesion. Based on the text of the novel, we created a database including 932 interrogative utterances. To research the material, the methods of component, contextual, syntactical, stylistic analysis were employed. According to the author’s hypothesis, a variety of lexical, grammatical and phonetic means provide coherence of interrogative utterances at microlevel of a literary text. Among the lexical means of coherence presented in the novel under investigation, we found full and partial lexical repetition, repetition of synonyms and antonyms, repetition of interrogative pronouns and adverbs. Among grammatical means of coherence, there are presented full and partial repetition of an interrogative utterance, anaphora, syntactical parallelism, chiasmus, parenthesis, participle clauses and tense agreement of verbs. Among phonetic means of coherence, there were found alliteration, assonance and rhythm. The discovered means of coherence serve to form not only a syntactical but also a semantical unity of a literary text.