Russian Polyptoton: Grammatic Form and Rhetorical Content

The article uses a narrow understanding of polyptoton (repetition of a word in different cases), which goes back to classical rhetoric. This allows to consider the specifics of the polyploton in the Russian language with its developed case system. The Russian polyptoton can be reduced to four types. We distinguish an intensive polyptoton, an extensive polyptoton, a contrasting polyptote and a descriptive set type. All these types express the category of plurality in different ways. A good example of intensive polyploton is biblical phrases like “song of songs”. Such a polyptot is called a genitive superlative. There is also a way of expressing superlativeness in Russian with the help of the instrumental case like дурак дураком. Intensive polyptoton can also express the meaning of reflexivity: слово о словах, каталог каталогов. The extensive type of polyptote coincides with a figure called an epimone. Unlike the other three types of polypoton, it is not associated with binomials and can form a rather long row with a word in different cases. The contrasting polyptoton is the antithesis within one word, as in the Latin proverb: homo homini lupus est. Polyptoton describing a set - a phenomenon not yet studied in Russian grammar. The Russian polyptoton is interesting in that it manifests itself in different inflections. Therefore, the widespread understanding of a polypoton as a repetition of words with one root is not relevant for the Russian language. Russian polyptoton is as far as possible from paranomazia, pun. Its grammatical nature is strongly expressed.