A Comparative Lexical Analysis of Kazakh, Russian and English Children’s Folklore

Abstract

Occupying a special position in the oral folk art of any nation, children’s folklore is a complex field, which interrelates two areas: folklore for children and folklore created by children, learned from adults, and passed on from some children to other children. Human world and values are reflected in folklore - thus the ethnographic study of children’s folklore contributes to the understanding of the specifics of various cultures, and children’s participation in them. The purpose of the study is to describe children’s folklore in the Kazakh, Russian, and English languages from the linguistic and cultural comparative perspectives. The importance of identifying the lexical and phraseological features of different genres of children’s folklore and describing their common and culturally marked characteristics lies in the fact that despite the availability of ethnographic studies of children’s folklore in some cultures, there doesn’t exist a single research on cross-cultural comparative perspectives of various genres of children’s folklore. The study employed analytical descriptive, and comparative methods. The research data were collected through the online sociolinguistic surveys parallelly conducted in the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation. Texts of children’s folklore in English were taken from the collections Nursery Rhymes and Mother Goose’s Songs . The amount of research data made nearly 2000 Kazakh, Russian and English children’s folklore texts. The study revealed that the genre variety of children’s folklore leaves an imprint on the language of each genre. The lexical and phraseological analysis of various genres of children’s folklore demonstrated an active use of neologisms, transrational language and personal names. Children’s folklore is characterized not only by genre and intragenre dynamics, but also by historical changes.