INDIVIDUAL LINGUISTIC PECULIARITIES OF A STORYTELLER (THE CASE OF SHOR HEROIC EPIC STORIES’ RECORDINGS)
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2020-3-20-31
This article deals with individual peculiarities of word usage by Shor storytellers (qaychi’s). We have analyzed (and, partially, deciphered) a row of manuscripts of Shor heroic epic stories and delineated some linguistic features typical for a certain storyteller. Storytellers use similar or identical stylistic devices and communicative and pragmatic means. Firstly, each storyteller preserves the features of his or her dialect or subdialect, both lexical and grammatical ones. Secondly, modern storytellers widely use Russian borrowings as global or partial copies. Thirdly, practically all storytellers use typical for the spoken language contracted forms of verbs, verbal forms, pronouns and nouns. Fourthly, storytellers abundantly use communicative and pragmatic particles of their choice. Such particles are difficult for translation into Russian; they are often omitted in written editions of epic texts (e. g. polza, tedir, noo, etc.). Fifthly, each storyteller has its own individual expressions and words. The oral register of telling an epic story makes the use of communicative and pragmatic particles especially prominent. Each storyteller has his or her preferred particles used most often, although, of course, all particles can be used by any storyteller. Such particles help the storyteller to collect his or her thoughts, to communicate with the listeners, etc.; moreover, they fulfill very important semantic and pragmatic functions: Tedir stresses the hearsay evidentiality of epic texts or a certain distance of the speaker to the narrated events meaning ‘as one says, as people say, as far as I can judge, as far as I could understand, it has appeared (to me), etc.’ Izä in epic texts stresses the adequacy of a narration. Polza is used in Shor as a particle marking switch reference (as for …); in epics, it is a particle serving as a stylistic device suspense, and helping to raise the interest of the listeners in the continuation of the story. Even if these features are common to all storytellers whose epic texts we have analyzed, their choices of a certain word, expression or form are individual. Certain words and peculiarities of their usage indicate the personality of a storyteller, similar to his typical handwriting; both of them are individual and unique. Moreover, some usages give a clue to the emotions and the state of mind of the qaychi during his performance.
Keywords: the Shor language, vocabulary, heroic epic story, storyteller, individual word usage, communicative and pragmatic particles, audio recording
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Issue: 3, 2020
Series of issue: Issue 3
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
Pages: 20 — 31
Downloads: 610