Structural-semantic types of good wishes and curses in the Chamalal language

Abstract

The author examines the folklore poetry of Chamalals, which includes the centuries-old tales and parables, ceremonial and family-lyrical songs, ritual lamentations, proverbs, sayings, counting-out rhymes, riddles, emotionally expressive lexicon, etc. The subject of this research is the good wishes and curses comprising the small folklore genres. The relevance of the selected topic is substantiated by uniqueness of the genre, which varies among the folklores of different nations. In order to preserve the language palette of humanity, in the conditions of currently ongoing irreversible process aimed at its reduction and unification, it is necessary to create full descriptions of the “living” languages. This article is dedicated to examination of the emotionally expressive lexicon presented by good wishes and curses in various situations on ontology of the Chamalal society. Based on the existing and newly introduced into the scientific discourse emotionally expressive vocabulary, the author explores the structural-semantic types of good wishes and curses in the Chamalal language. The analyzed Chamalal good wishes and curses as the primary genres of folklore discourse become the object of linguistic description for the first time. In the course of research, the author determines the main structural-semantic types of the emotionally expressive lexicon, trend towards passage of the sayings with unkind wishes into curses, and enhanced expressiveness in the phrases containing an unkind wish.