FOLKLORE ARCHAICS AS A SOURCE OF RESEARCH OF PRE-MORPHOLOGICAL LANGUAGE RELICS

Nataliia А. Lysiuk, lyssnata@gmail.com

ORCID 0009-0007-0820-6707

Ph.D. in Philology, Associate Professor,

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/StudLing2024.25.72-88

PDF (UKRAINIAN)

ABSTRACT

This article shows that due to the high degree of sacralization, archaic folklore texts preserve relics and rudiments of pre-morphological mechanisms. Professor Kostyantyn Tyshchenko’s contribution to the theory of glossogenesis allows us to consider the language of folklore as a relic phenomenon since archaic folklore texts, keeping primary speech phenomena, contain factual evidence in favour of the truth of his assertions. The first human words, such as onomatopoeia, exclamations, and glossolalia, are unusually frequent in archaic folklore; they play more important roles and perform broader functions than today. From the mythologic perspective, each environmental object and phenomenon was imagined to be alive, and folkloric onomatopoeias reproduced their speech. Acoustic imitations serve for communication on a practical level with people and animals and on a symbolic level with supernatural beings; as ideophones, they become the sound portraits/passports of objects and phenomena. Folkloric exclamations have a unique meaning; their peculiar features are uncustomary pronunciation, blurred semantics, quasi-grammar, ritual functions; seasonal, daily, and gender characteristics.

Folklore texts are abundant in lalias, which reproduce signs of otherworldly speech. Palilalias denote quantitative and/or qualitative characteristics of objects. The phonetic originality of these texts is determined by reduplications in the form of constant epithets, palilogies, two- and three-fold repetitions of words, their combinations, lines (in particular, epistrophe, refrains), anaphors, epiphoras, anagrams, etc., as well as folklore formulas, actions, situations. Oxylalias and azhitolalias serve for pronouncing spells and tongue twisters; xenolalias are used in spells and children’s folklore. Glossolalias are presented in folklore as abracadabras with quasi-grammatical desemantized forms.

Keywords: glossogenesis, pre-morphological language relics, archaic folklore texts, onomatopoeia, ideophones, exclamations, lalias.

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