Semantics and functioning of epithets for the designation of the wreath in Ukrainian calendar ritual poetry

Abstract

Considerable attention to the study of specific Ukrainian folk oral literature, observed recently led to the need for linguistic exploration of calendar ritual songs, because they most clearly record the echoes of the past and at the same time fix the peculiar changes caused by modern civilization processes. The folk poetry epithets are a conceptually important component of the artistic structure of folk works, including calendar-ritual poetry, as they relate to all the main images depicted in the songs. In the attributive space of calendar-ritual texts, the basic features of the outlook of the people are coded, as well as the meanings necessary for understanding the reconstruction of the mythological model of the Ukrainian world.
Wreath is a ritual object that appears in all calendar ritual genres and has a wide range of epithets. It is determined that the names of plants are the most productive attributives for the designation of the wreath. This is due to the ritual practice of making wreaths from certain plants, endowed with symbolic semantics. Instead, epithets related to the names of jewels and express the idea of value are later in origin. It is observed that among the analyzed attributives, those whose have the positive evaluative component in the semantic structure are predominant. This is due to pragmatic studied texts, the purpose of ritual practices, mainly to the preservation, enhancement and production of important and useful things for person, and an overall positive reflection of the symbol of the wreath in the folk tradition. Attention is drawn to rarely used, but symbolically spacious epithets, the analysis of which contributes to the conceptualization of individual fragments of the world's mythological model.
Consequently, the epithet characteristic of the wreath as a ritual object depends on the subject of the text, the speaker's orientation on the appropriate speech strategy to achieve the desired goal, as well as on the peculiarities of the mythopoetic model of the world. Epithets of the autumn-winter cycle are mostly secondary, transposed both from texts of spring-summer songs, and borrowed from the wedding ritualism of Ukrainians.