Structural-grammatical and semantic features of the functioning of indirect speech in orthodox prayers

Abstract

Linguistic features of different confessional style genres have always aroused the scientists’ interest. One of the most common genres in the confessional style is the prayer, which has a communicative-pragmatic orientation formed due to its structure and several language devices, including elements of indirect speech, introduced into the prayer discourse. The relevance of the topic of the article resulted from the prayer interpretation as a representant of the endophase (internal) speech of the religious, which has a monological-dialogical structure and mostly is expressed through imperative constructions. The object of the article is 458 Orthodox prayers (9.1 pages). The purpose of the article is to substantiate the basis for interpreting prayers as examples of indirect speech and to characterize the constructions that represent direct, indirect, and free direct speech of the recipient, which are directed to higher forces. The purpose implies the realization of implementing a set of tasks: 1) to define the prayer as an indirect speech representant; 2) to analyze the types of sentences with indirect speech, detected in the prayer discourse; 3) to characterize the introductory elements, which illustrate indirect speech in prayers. The analysis of Orthodox prayers confirmed the hypothesis about qualification its as examples of indirect speech, since in such structure imperative, interrogative and exclamation sentences are actively functioning. They often include direct (55 fixations), indirect (128) and free direct (177) speech, and especially a significant number of vocal constructions. In the author’s words or parts of complex sentences related to them verbs of speech predominate (благати, вигукнути, відповісти, говорити, казати, обіцяти, промовляти, просити, співати etc.), thinking and cognition (бажати, думати, забути, знати, зрозуміти, пам’ятати), perception (вислухати, чути) and especially those related to the religious sphere (благословляти, вірувати, молити, присягати, сповідувати). The study of thedevices of transmitting indirect speech in other sub-styles of confessional style deserves attention in the future. It will allow to form a holistic picture of the reproductive features of our language. Keywords: confessional style, genre, prayer, indirect speech, direct speech, free direct speech, imperative, exclamatory, interrogative sentences.