Anacoluthon

Within oral communication, the speaker must perform many cognitive tasks at the same time, such as paying attention to what is said by the interlocutor, creating a response suitable for the answer, anticipating their reaction or a possible reply to what they are being told, taking care that their use of language is adjusted to the situation, remembering information from the past and verbal tenses, etc. Because of all these circumstances, your attention and memory resources are generally overloaded. The word anacoluthon refers to the lack of consequence when an expression is elaborated. In other words, we can say that it is a solecism, which implies that there is a syntax failure, which in turn implies a language rules violation.

Related topics

Anadiplosis, cataphora, polysyndeton

What is an anacoluthon?

An anacoluthon is a rhetorical figure that supposes an incorrect syntactic elaboration of a phrase, it is the inconsistency that is presented in a speech and whose error can cause that one or more words are not in agreement with the rest of the phrase.

The anacoluthon encloses in turn a modification of the structure of the discourse when it is developing, causing a lack of consistency. It usually appears more frequently within colloquial language, and usually happens unconsciously.

Etymology

The term anacoluthon is a word that comes from Latin, specifically from the word “anacoluthon“. This word at the same time has its origin in the Greek word “anakoluthos“, which can be explained in two clearly differentiated parts:

• The prefix “an-“, which is of the privative
• The term “koluthos“, which can be translated as “following“.

It is also important to mention that the word is recognized as a rupture in the syntax of a sentence, an imbalance or asymmetry that sometimes leads to incoherence.

It also has a word that is considered its synonym, and this is “solecism“. This term comes from the Latin soloecismus, which at the same time comes from the Greek language σολοικισμός or soloikismós, which has the meaning “syntactic error“. Its origin is the word σόλοικος (soloikos), applied to the inhabitants of Solos in Cilicia, who spoke a highly peculiar variety of Greek.

Characteristics of the anacoluthon

Some of the most important features of the anacoluthon are as follows:

• There are two types of anacoluthon: the anapodoton, which is the repetition of a part of the sentence; and the anantapodoton, which is the suppression of a part of the sentence.
• It can happen when a pronoun is used to introduce a relative sentence and the pronoun does not have a syntactic function.
• It consists of leaving a word or group of words without concordance with the rest of the sentence.
• There are several types of inconsistencies involved in the anacoluthon: it may be that a part of the sentence is eliminated, it may also happen that a part of the sentence is repeated several times, that the subject has to agree in time and person with the predicate or that there is a phrase that has no relation with the rest of the sentence.
• They are a set of grammatical errors arising from the misuse of language and the lack of correct syntax.

Uses of anacoluthon

When the anacoluthon is made on purpose, it is then taken into account as a rhetorical resource that is used to achieve expressive effects. In “El Quijote de la Mancha” by Cervantes, we find many of them. It can also be used as a literary resource that serves to make representations of a colloquial character or tell a story that takes place in a popular environment.

Examples

Some examples of anacoluthon are the following:

• When the speaker pronounces a nominal syntagma that was apparently oriented to assume the role of subject of the expression, but that in the end does not fulfill this function: “My sister, your in-laws have fields in La Pampa”. The correct construction of such phrase could be “My sister’s in-laws have fields in La Pampa”.
• In poorly constructed expressions such as “I sell men’s silk shirts”, “The company makes sunglasses for women” or “Postmodernism is when the authors are skeptical”.
• When certain terms are missing or superfluous, an anacoluthon can be produced. For example, in the phrase “In developed cities they have good transport infrastructure” because the correct way to express this idea is: “Developed cities have good transport infrastructure” or “In developed cities the inhabitants have good transport infrastructure at their disposal”.
• Tell me no and throw me a camouflaged yes, nail me a doubt and I will stay by your side.
• I’m going to get to work.
• I left my dress and my phone at home.
• In underdeveloped countries they do not have an adequate health structure.