[Grammar] Time/place personification – S/O swap

[emka]

I have a few questions about a certain type of prepositional phrase turned something different, usually indicating time or place in narration. I sometimes read such constructions in travel stories or diary entries.

Time or place are personified, usually followed by the verb “to find” or “to see” in the past tense. Instead of “On New Year’s Eve we were packing bags…” or “In London I was in an excellent mood…” or “On Sunday he mowed the lawn…, this type of phrase would read like this:

New Year’s Eve found us packing bags…
London found me in an excellent mood…
Sunday saw him mow the lawn…
(I made up these examples, but that's the pattern)

The subject becomes the direct object, and the place or time become the subject instead, taking on a personality that can “find” and “see” things.

What is this phenomenon of subject-object swap called?
Is it a figure of speech?
Is it a certain type of construction with a name to it so that I can read up on it?
Is it only used in writing?

 

[emka]

Addition:
It's not just time and place, it seems to be a general thing. I am reading online, and here's what I've just found:

The idea would see a distinct architectural structure, of approximately 24,000sq m on four floors, built in.....

I'm getting really curious now and want to understand this construction.

 

[Tdol]

It's common in diary entries, travel stories, etc, because it can help with the sequencing, by highlighting the time, so the writer may think it makes the narrative clearer. You can use it in speech, though I imagine it's more common in writing as it's there to help structure things in an orderly way.

 

[5jj]

It's common in diary entries, travel stories, etc, because it can help with the sequencing, by highlighting the time, so the writer may think it makes the narrative clearer. You can use it in speech, though I imagine it's more common in writing as it's there to help structure things in an orderly way.

Quite - but that doesn't answer emka's questions:

What is this phenomenon of subject-object swap called?
Is it a figure of speech?
Is it a certain type of construction with a name to it so that I can read up on it?

I can't answer them either. I have been thinking hard, and scrabbling through my books, but I haven't come up with anything yet.

An interesting topic, emka.

 

[Tdol]

I was glossing over that part in case someone actually knew the answer. And it was very late at night.

It is similar in some ways to anastrophe, isn't it? But what the exact term is, I don't know.

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/A/anastrophe.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastrophe

 

[5jj]

anastrophe

That first link led me to a number of wonderful terms:

• anastrophe
• hysteron proteron
• hypallage
• hysterologia
• parenthesis
• epergesis
• tmesis
• synchysis
• metathesis

Unfortunately, none of them seems to cover emka's case. The dawn has brought me no emlightenment, so we'll have to wait and see if anybody else comes up with a suggestion.

 

[emka]

Morning has broken....,
teachers have spoken...(thanks, Cat Stevens)

But this morning saw no real answers to my questions:lol:, as 5jj has stated. Maybe I am just being overly analytic? Maybe not everything can be categorised and named?

But I am certainly overwhelmed with the number of new terms for figures of speech offered instead.;-) As I only had Latin at school and most of them are of Greek origin, it's all (no, not all, but some are) Greek to me...

But let's wait. Maybe morning or midday does bring enlightenment to some other teacher, whom I will then
... praise with elation.

 

[Tdol]

Maybe not everything can be categorised and named?

A truly terrifying thought. :-D

 

[emka]

Not really, but I love lightbulb moments. :lol::lol::lol:

If I see or hear isolated things that seem odd to me and I get the answer "Well, that's just the way we say it", then I file it away under "usage; simply try to memorise".
But if I detect a pattern, as I have here, and I can't categorise or name it, this bugs me a little.

(By the way, there is an interesting phenomenon in medicine. If people suffer from some symptoms whose cause is unknown, usually over a long time, and if they have seen many doctors who were all unable to come up with a clear diagnosis, these patients become very frustrated. But when finally somebody has a name for their symptoms, even if they can't offer a cure, all of a sudden the patient feels somewhat better.It's Soandso-itis; they are not just imagining... Not that I would suffer terribly, though .)

 

[5jj]

But if I detect a pattern, as I have here, and I can't categorise or name it, this bugs me a little.

Try one of these. They are almost certainly not correct, but they might keep you happy till something better turns up. Anyway, if you use one of them, very few people will know enough to tell you that you are wrong.;-)

ontological metaphor - definition and examples of ontological metaphor
Conceptual metaphor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[birdeen's call]

If there is a term for it, it must be pretty obscure since no one has managed to find it. I haven't either.

If you have a way of doing it, you may want to read this article:

A Grammatical Approach to Personification Allegory
Morton W. Bloomfield
Modern Philology
Vol. 60, No. 3 (Feb., 1963), pp. 161-171

I have just read it. It's interesting and not off-putting like many other specialized texts. It's available on the internet here but you need a subscription.

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER


(1) NO, I do NOT have the answer!

(2) But, like other inquiring minds, I have been googling like mad, and like others I have found nothing.

(3) I did, however, want to pass this along to you.

(a) I found it by googling "Poetic Devices the tools of the poet." It credits its

material to the English Department of the University of California at Los Angeles

(UCLA) and "others."

(b) It cities a song called "You May Be Right" by Billy Joel. I guess that I can legally

quote a few relevant lines:

Friday night I crashed your party [attended your party without an invitation]
Saturday I said I'm sorry
Sunday came and trashed me out again [Sunday made me do it again]
I was only having fun

(c) The website's name for such language use? Simply one word:

Personification

 

[emka]

Thanks, everybody, for your efforts to shed some light on this issue. I’m not sure whether I should feel bad because I have made so many people try to answer it, or whether I have picked a truly interesting aspect because it has earned me a five-star rating. It seems that the answer is simply “personification”, a term I had chosen intuitively for my thread title. Sometimes the answer is already in the question.

Birdeen: unfortunately I don’t have a subscription to jstore. But this sentence on the first page of the article sums it up quite nicely: The whole subject of personification, allegory, and symbolism is obscured by conflicting theories and a wavering, and even contradictory, terminology. Here you go…

Parser: Your source (Poetic devices, the tools of the poet) made me think. Maybe I should change jobs, given that I like figures of speech so much.;-)