The Characters in the Frame Story of the Kalmyk Fairy-Tale Tradition (the case study of tales recorded by G.I. Ramstedt)

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of the characters in the frame story of the Kalmyk fairy tale in terms of computer technologies. On the basis of the folklore material recorded by G.I. Ramstedt, the authors consider nominations and characters’ names from the point of view of the frequency of their occurrence in fairy tales. As a result of the authors’s attempted analysis to construct the first stage of the frame story of the folklore text characters, one can establish cultural significance not only of this or that character but of the Mongolian folklore tradition as a whole. Thus, the most frequent character that appears in almost every story (in 14 out of 15 texts), is ‘a man (kyn)’, then ‘a boy’ (kovuyn) and ‘an old woman’ (emgn), with the frequency of occurrence 13 out of 15 tales. Then follow such characters as: ’a girl’ (kuyykn - 12), ‘a horse’ (morn - 11), ‘khan’ (11), ‘an old man’ (ovgn - 10). Whereas the frequency of occurrence of other characters is not so high.