The Russian language has a wide range of expressive means. One of them is the synecdoche. Examples of its use are quite common in Russian literature.
For example, sometimes in speech the singular is used instead of the plural.
Everything seemed to die in silence –
Trees, birds, reeds, The eagle owl and the boar quieted down…
Here - thunder hit the drum!!!
Sometimes the use of the plural instead of the singular indicates to us that the synecdoche trope has been applied here. Examples of such a transfer of meaning on the basis of a quantitative relationship from one object or phenomenon to another are also often found in fiction or poetry.
Young people hardly think of themselves
Not the Rasmussen. Fate
Gives them a lesson: on a h alt
Kindle the fire. One praise!
It happens that the name of some of its parts is used to designate the whole - this is also a synecdoche. Examples might be:
1. He knew that in the village of Nikishkino a roof and bread and s alt were waiting for him.
2. In his herds we counted one hundred and twenty-nine heads of large-horned ones.
3. And he couldn't fool them, seven couplesinnocent eyes that hopefully listened to him.
The use of a generic name instead of a specific name also indicates that in this case a synecdoche is used. Examples of such a substitution are:
1. Oh, you uneducated peasantry! The Internet itself will not work without a modem.
2. Soul sings! Hello friends - my childhood pioneering!
Very often used, on the contrary, the specific name instead of the generic one. For example:
1. No, I won’t go for a walk today: my penny has run out, alas…
2. Waves beckon my sail forward…
Romance calls into the distance again!
Synecdoche is very close to metonymy. Literary critics often argue about which type of tropes to attribute this or that expression to. This happens due to the fact that metonymy is also built on the constancy of relations between phenomena, however, of a slightly different nature.
Pushkin's line "All flags will visit us" on the one hand is regarded as "all ships will come to visit us". That is, there is a synecdoche - the use of the name of the part instead of the whole.
If we assume that the word "flags" carries the meaning of the word "nation", then this is pure metonymy.
Thus, we can conclude that the synecdoche is an expressive means that allows the transfer of meaning according to a quantitative attribute: from the singular to the plural and vice versa, from a part of an object to the whole. It also implies the substitution of a generic feature for a specific one and, on the contrary, for a specific one with a generic one; naming a single object or phenomenonmore general or plural, and the whole group - one representative of the multitude.
Examples of synecdoche can often be found in ordinary, colloquial life.
"Mom, do you have any money now to buy me an apple?" - the girl in the store asks her parent. Using in speech instead of naming cash, finance in general, the species substitution - the word "money", the child, without knowing it, uses the synecdoche.
And an elderly avid football fan sadly states: “Yes, the current fan has gone different … Not like before!” The entire community of fans in his speech is called as if it were one single person.
Thus, people ignorant of linguistics easily use the trope with the sonorous name "synecdoche".
