linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, an apo koinou construction is a blend of two clauses through a

lexical word In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...

which has two

syntactical In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...

functions, one in each of the blended clauses. The clauses are connected asyndetically. Usually the word common to both sentences is a predicative or an object in the first sentence and a subject in the second one. Such constructions are not grammatical in standard modern English, but may serve stylistic functions, such as conveying through written dialogue that a character is uneducated. In many cases, the second clause of such a construction may be seen as a relative clause whose relative pronoun has been dropped, which in English is not generally grammatical when the relative pronoun is the subject of its clause. The term 'apo koinou' is from two Greek words: the preposition ''apo'' 'from'; and ''koinou'', the genitive singular of the neuter adjective ''koinon'' 'common'.

Examples

* ''"There was no breeze came through the door".'' ( E. Hemingway) * ''"There was a door led into the kitchen".'' (E. Hemingway) * ''"This is the sword killed him."'' (Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics)

References

* N.N. Kislitsyna, T.V. Melnichenko "Text Interpretation" {{DEFAULTSORT:Apo koinou Construction Rhetorical techniques