Antonenko N. Mythopoetics and Linguistic Semiotics of Associations in Russian Fairy Tales.

The Thesis aims at a comprehensive study of mythopoetics and linguistic semiotics of psychological associations in Russian fairy tales. The Thesis offers a comprehensive description of peculiarities of structure of sacral and mythopoetic language of the East Slavs, and Russian fairy tales in particular, attempts to reconstruct archaic meanings of the sacral language of the East Slavs, defines the notion of 'psychological association' and studies phenomenology of the sacred history of the East Slavs as individuals and a nation, and analyses the nature of isofunctionality of mythopoetic images in Russian fairy tales. This analysis helped comprehend and define the notion of psychological association as a type of associations between the phenomena of microcosm and macrocosm, and of semantic forms which have been comprehensively verbalized in the contexts of transition situations in the sacred history of an individual and society; explain the notion of psychological association in light of the theory of the sacred, the frame theory and the possible worlds theory; interpret the notion of a "possible world" as a phenomenon related to linguistic mythopoetics; define the spectrum of sacral ceremonies (birth, initiation (baptism), marriage proposal, wedding, prayer, spell, shedding of 'sacral liquids', etc.) and the principles of structuring linguistic situations of transition between the worlds; identify the types of psychological associations, namely the markers of irreality in Russian fairy tales, and describe the mediators between the worlds; consider semantic dominants explaining the isofunctional nature of psychological associations.