|
Lines 9-14
|
when a policeman
diguised as the sun
creeps into the room
and your mother
disguised as birds
calls from the trees
|
The structure of the first of these clauses ('when a policeman
disguised as the sun creeps into the room') is Cj SPA. The predicator
is the intransitive verb 'creeps' and the subject is 'a policeman
disguised as the sun', a noun phrase which has 'policeman' as its
headword and contains a realative clause 'disguised as the sun'
which postmodifies it. The adverbial, the prepositional phrase 'into
the room' indicates the direction of movement. The second clause
' your mother disguised as birds calls form the trees' has the same
SPA structure, with the conjunction 'when' in line 9 clearly applying
to this clause too, because of the coordination. Moreover, the predicator
is also an intransitive verb and the head noun of the subject noun
phrase 'mother' is also postmodified by a relative clause 'disguised
as birds'. The only difference is the adverbial, which indicates
the source of the calling rather than its intended destination.This
extensive parallelism suggests that we must see the policeman figure
and the mother figure as equivalent to one another in some way.
One obvious way to manage this interpretatively is to notice that
they both can be authority figures. The word 'mother' prototypically
has kinder associations to the fore, but the paralellism and the
fact that the clause about the policeman comes first tends to depress
the the more positive connotoations ans upgrade those associations
which can be shared with the policeman. In both subject noun phrases
there is an odd semantic relation between the headword and the relative
clause which postmodifies it/ We will comment on this under the
heading of semantic deviation (Task G).
|
|
Lines 15-16
|
you will put on a dress of guilt
and shoes with broken high ideals
|
The two noun phrases 'a dress of guilt' and 'shoes with broken
high ideals' are both parallel in that they are both objects to
'put on'. In addition to that, both tof the heas nouns ('dress'
and 'shoes') are postmodified by a prepositional phrase which involves
more semantic debiation (which again we will discuss in Task G).
|
