Linguistic Means Used in Recollections of Childhood (the Case of Oral Narratives Told by Komi-Permyaks)

The article explores how the theme of children’s games is presented in recollections of Komi-Permyaks. It shows how the informants use the traditional means of the genre (authorization, orientation toward authenticity of what is told, the juxtaposition of time layers, visualization) as linguistic markers of such stories. Game activities dominate in childhood, they form our personality, that is why recollections of them are extended, semantically deep, their style is expressive, the words and structures are semantically and psychologically loaded. Such narratives not only contain vivid pictures of the past but also reflect the narrator’s emotional immersion into his/her own inner world. The paper describes the means used to express feelings and make an interlocutor empathize (repetitions, rhetoric questions, contact words, emphasis on certain fragments, stylistic means, and phraseology). Recollections of childhood games reveal a specific sensual world of children and show us how a child gradually becomes involved into the adult world through games. The narrator’s desire to convey in details the excitement experienced in his/her distant past is manifested in the active use of verbs in the present tense, these producing the effect of presence, in the use of exclamations, interjections, and onomatopoeic words. Komi-Permyaks’ recollections of their childhood are characterized by a specific quality, expressed by different means: they are closely connected with the perception of nature and its energy. This is the reflection of one of the main features characterizing the Komi people’s worldview – the principle of nature conformity and naturalness (they are naïve and most sincere in communication with nature). Special attitude to nature, the naturalness of emotions and behavior are important elements of the Komi-Permyak national character, vividly manifested in recollections of childhood.