Time category of English folktale „The Seal-Catcher”

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the study of time category in the English folktale „The Seal-Catcher”. Folktale has always been considered as the unique component of folklore. All peoples of the world have been describing the pastime events through the folklore, in particular, through the folktale. A folktale is the world’s heritage unit. It has been transferred from one generation to another to tell about how people lived many years ago, how they worked, built relationship, which valuables they had etc. Folktales as long as anecdotes, fables, songs and other folklore components were told in oral. In this article the usage of time category in the English folktale „The Seal-Catcher” is researched. The object of the study is the folktale „The Seal-Catcher”. The aim is to determine the characteristics of the means of expressing the category of time in the English folktale. The term temporality is used as the synonym to the term time. In other words, temporality is the category of time being mostly used in specific unit. The category of time includes not only the time forms but also lexical means of linguistic expression of time. Time relation and time characteristics are studied in this article on the materials of the folktale „The Seal-Catcher”. In this folktale the most commonly used tense is Past Simple tense – 85%. The time category is mainly built on the Past Indefinite grammatical constructions. Application of Present Indefinite tense is not characteristic for this folktale. The further research is considered to be promising when to study modality of English folktales as the way of motivation to the action.