To the Question of Linguocognitive Qualification of Folk Riddles (on the Material of Russian and Azerbaijan Languages)

Abstract

In the presented article, folk riddles are subjected to linguocognitive analysis. Riddles have traditionally been studied either in literary or in a purely linguistic (structural and semantic) aspects, which turn out to be weak in terms of revealing the entire system of explicated and implicit patterns of architectonics of a not so voluminous, but rather complex linguistic and ethnocultural mechanism of folk riddles. Based on the current situation, we considered it necessary to illuminate the named units in the aspect of their linguocognitive comprehension in the space of a comparative typology - on the material of unrelated languages. Due to the limited possibilities of communication, we focused only on the main parameters of the linguocognitive analysis of riddles – the properties of anthropocentricity, conceptual base and internal form.
Riddles are anthropocentric through and through, their conceptual base, as a rule, is associated with the disclosure of objects and phenomena precisely in their conceptual hypostasis: answers are always nominations of concepts, and not the names of objects and phenomena in their dictionary sense.
The analytic-synthetic structure of riddles, more than any other linguistic unit, reveals the deep connections of language with the creative thinking of the speaking subject, most clearly explicates the so-called internal form of the linguistic unit, conditioned by the “national spirit of the ethnos”.
The analysis once again confirms the need for a systemic linguo-cognitive understanding of the named units of the small genre of folklore, especially in its typological implementation.