Syndesis

Syndesis  (from the Greek  σύνδεσις syndesis "connection"; adjective: syndetic ) means in linguistics a chain of linguistic expressions of the same grammatical category , for example words, syntagmata , parts of sentences or sentences, produced by syntactic functional words ( conjunctions ) . Example: “These are old and tired and defeated characters.” If the same functional word is used for the sequence, as here, the connection is called polysyndetic .

The opposite is asyndesis (adjective: asyndetic ; example: "These are old, tired, defeated characters.").

A chain in which only the last element is connected by conjunction is monosyndetic (example: "These are old, tired and defeated figures."). A well-known example is: “ I came, saw and conquered. “The quote is monosyndetic in German, but asyndetic in the Latin original:“ Veni, vidi, vici ”.

The use of asyndetic or polysyndetic order as a rhetorical stylistic device is called asyndeton or polysyndeton .

literature

• Helmut Glück (Ed.), With the collaboration of Friederike Schmöe : Metzler Lexikon Sprache. 3rd, revised edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-476-02056-8 , pp. 64, 422, 500, 667.