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Semantic-Modulatory Constructions of Vowels in Medical and Ritual Texts of the Ukrainians

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The authors of the publication:
Temchenko Andriy
p.:
31–45
UDC:
398.3(=161.2)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/nte2021.01.031
Bibliographic description:
Temchenko, A. (2021) Semantic-Modulatory Constructions of Vowels in Medical and Ritual Texts of the Ukrainians. Folk Art and Ethnology, 1 (389), 31–45.

Author

Temchenko Andriy

a Ph.D. in History, an associate professor at the Department of the Ukrainian History of the Bohdan Khmelnytskyi Cherkasy National University. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3999-9459

 

Semantic-Modulatory Constructions of Vowels in Medical and Ritual Texts of the Ukrainians

 

Abstract

Introduction. The article examines the mythological semantics of vowel phonemes in medical and ritual texts of Ukrainians. The purpose of the publication is to study the ways of sound conveyance of mythological meanings in texts of incantations. Research methods accumulate means of scientific knowledge, borrowed from phonology, linguistics, and philosophy. The results obtained. Myth-making processes focused on verbum audiunt have their own peculiarities, as they concern the limbic system. The singularity of verbal treatment is the prevalence of background perception, and it is explained by the fact that a text is addressed not only to a specific listener, but also to imaginary mythological characters. The structure of a text consists of elements that form the melody of speech, with adjusting the sound range of the rite, whose amplitude and frequency establish the connection of the bearer of a tradition with the times of totems and ancestors, when rather the emotional and sonic component of the rite than the semantic one was important.

The sound structure of a text has binary features. In particular, semantic opposites to sound combinations with the melody of wild nature are vowels with strong articulation, whose utterance confirms the presence of the self in the surroundings of the other. The sound organization of a ritual text is distinguished by its structuredness, which duplicates the orderly fullness of the Universe. In this aspect, there is an actualization of the text non‑text opposition, which is a means of sonic and semantic normalizations of the diseased body.

The sonic architectonics of a medical text is systemic, because at the level of sound, it duplicates the mythological picture of the Universe. The human world (the cosmic top) is represented by loud sounds with ascending intonations, which are opposed to descending intonations related to diseases (the cosmic bottom). Via imperative forms of verbs, where loud vowels predominate, a disease is expelled, in whose name non‑loud vowels prevail, demonstrating the superiority of top-life over bottom-death. In this aspect, sound is a marker of this world, and it opposes the dumb and empty otherworld. In this regard characteristic are motifs of brothers meeting, devastation of a disease, and benediction.

 

Keywords

myth, rite, medical text, vowel phonemes, proto-language, binary oppositions, motif.

 

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