The concept of “hero’s bride” in the early texts of the Yakut olonkho: a phenomenological aspect

The article considers the concept of “hero's bride” in the context of the phenomenological approach based on six early texts of the Yakut olonkho. We identified from these texts 28 suggestive epic formulas which are the main means of representing the concept under study. As a result of the study, it was found that the nominative density of the concept “hero's bride” includes the concepts “female beauty,” “portrait,” “body,” “youngest daughter,” “needlework,” “clothes,” “braid,” “skylark.” The analysis of these concepts made it possible to reveal the aesthetic preferences of female beauty in the minds of native speakers. It turned out that the representatives of “female beauty” were such signs as shapeliness, slim body, beautiful face, long braid, white skin, rosy cheeks, thin eyebrows, shiny eyelashes, plump lips, snow-white teeth and restrained character. Particularly stood out light, thin skin, through which both bones and veins are visible. The combination of these characteristics formed the idea of the “hero's bride” - an ideally beautiful woman who was the standard of beauty in the linguistic picture of the world of the Yakuts of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. In addition, the predominance of the concept “braid” with referents braid in sweep sazhen + kuo indicates that this model of the concept explicated in the minds of the listeners all the above aesthetic characteristics of the concept “hero's bride.” The foregoing indicates the presence of phenomenological associative connections, that is, the concepts once verbalized by the storytellers accumulated in the social memory of the epic audience. In other words, the phenomenon of speech activity is revealed, in which there is a cumulative and interchangeable nature of concepts included in the conceptual area of the “hero's bride.”