Narrative projection of a real subject in an oral mythological story

The article discusses the category of narrator in oral mythological stories about a witch (based on the Polissya tradition) - how this category is manifested in the use of mythological vocabulary, namely the nominations of magic specialists. As a result of the study, it was found that in mythological prose there is a tendency to avoid the concrete-referential use of the direct nomination of a magical specialist. The lexeme witch is practically not used in the mythological narrative. In the introductory position (to introduce a character into the text), other language units are used: common names with the semantics of gender and age (often in combination with proper names and pronominal actualizers), pronouns, nominations of animals, or a description of the situation of the action of a magical specialist without his nomination. These features of the use of lexemes in mythological stories represent significant deviations from the general language tendencies in the field of reference of functional names, which is obviously due to the properties of the subject of narration in mythological stories. Its specificity is formed by a number of factors: the modality of this sphere of oral literature (reliability), the conditions of the communicative situation of the existence of mythological narratives (involvement in colloquial speech, in everyday communication), the content features of the texts - stories about their own experience of interaction with otherworldly forces or similar mystical experiences of people somehow related to the real subject of speech. These conditions create a special status of the narrator in mythological stories, and it manifests itself, along with other ways, in the sphere of reference of mythological vocabulary.