On the Pragmatic Conditionality of Folklore Texts

This article completes a cycle of studies on the genre peculiarities of folklore texts at the lexico-grammatical and word-building levels. It demonstrates that being the smallest meaningful units of text (and for that reason seemingly unnoticeable), even morphemes and grammemes appear in a folklore text only when carrying out tasks conditioned by the basic pragmatics of the genre. The author illustrates this statement referring to the functioning of the prefix and preposition без in different genres of Russian folklore, i. e. sayings, proverbs, riddles, chastushkas, ritual lamentations, charms, spiritual poems, and bylinas. According to statistics, constructions with без are frequent in sayings, proverbs, riddles, charms, and lamentations. In bylinas, their occurrence is moderate, and they are almost never found in chastushkas or spiritual poems. The frequency of the prefix and preposition без in different texts depends on the pragmatic nature of the genre. Proverbs, love charms, and lamentations use negations with без to indicate an unbreakable bond (X does not exist without Y), while riddles and healing spells use it to indicate the alienability of what cannot be alienated (Y exists without X, though X is indispensable). In medical and protective spells, the main function of без is to magically eliminate evil forces. Lamentations, whose main feature is the idea of a loss or a lack of something, employ constructions with без to create a special projection of a world full of deprivation and hardships

Art · Folklore · Linguistics · Literature · Poetry · Prefix · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Literature, Language, and Rhetoric Studies · Philosophy