Attributive features of the Moon in Ukrainian and English riddles from oral tradition

Abstract

V prispevku so z metodo kontrastivne analize raziskane posebnosti konceptualizacije lune v ukrajinskih in angleških ugankah. Raziskava temelji na besedilih iz najbolj popolnih zbirk ukrajinskih ugank – Uganke (1962), ki jih je uredil I. Berezovsky, in angleških ugank English Riddles from Oral Tradition (1951), ki jih je uredil A. Taylor. V prispevku so ugotovljene skupne značilnosti in razlike v motivacijski osnovi kodifikatorjev lune, ob tem pa so navedene njene asociativne vzporednice, ki se verbalizirajo v primerjanih ljudskih ugankah. Predstave o luni, ki jih je kolektivna zavest govorcev ukrajinskega in angleškega jezika osmislila na novo, so rekonstruirane na podlagi njenih najbolj univerzalnih atributivnih lastnosti, ki so eksplicitno oz. implicitno predstavljene v besedilih ljudskih ugank.

The paper attempts to provide a contrastive study of the riddle manifestation of the Ukrainian and English conception of the Moon. The article examines the corpus of Ukrainian and English riddles for the Moon found mainly in major Ukrainian and English riddle collections – Riddles (1962) edited by I. Berezovskyi and English Riddles from Oral Tradition (1951) edited by A. Taylor. It focuses on tracing the common and national features of Moon codifiers (associative parallels) as well as their motivation verbalised in riddle corpora under comparison. The Ukrainian and English conception of the Moon is reconstructed through its similar attributive features of the encoded object and its codifiers explicitly and/or implicitly represented in riddles from oral tradition.