Zakharova N. Linguistic and Cultural Peculiarities of Ukrainian and German Folk Riddles: Structure, Semantics, Pragmatics.

This thesis explores structural, semantic and pragmatic aspects of Ukrainian and German folk riddles within the framework of structural, linguistic and cultural as well as cognitive and discursive approaches. The research treats the folk riddle as a linguistic and cultural phenomenon, while elucidating the specific means through which the national and cultural components of its contents are verbalized in the contrasted languages. A folk riddle is viewed as a text that belongs to non-unfolded forms of folklore consciousness’ embodiment. Such forms represent important cultural meanings as indivisible whole. Pragmatic peculiarities of folk riddles’ structural organization determine the modes of their functioning in speech. The analysis of folk riddles reveals their specific ways and means of conceptualization as well as of linguistic and cultural interpretation of the extralingual reality by Ukrainian and German communities. The corresponding conceptual systems are outlined. The thesis defines the basic conceptual structures that undergo linguistic actualization in the textual corpus of Ukrainian and German riddles.