STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF THE TITLES IN GRIMMSʼ FAIRY TALES

Abstract

Grimmsʼ fairy tales are fairy tales collected in German lands and literarily processed by the great germanists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. They were included in the collection «Children’s and Household Tales» (German: «Kinder- und Hausmärchen»), originally published in 1812. Thanks to their depth and wonderful plots, these fairy tales have not lost popularity for several centuries and are read with pleasure by adults and children. The purpose of the research was to identify and describe the structural and semantic features of the titles, formulated by the German storytellers. The relevance. In the modern world of information, the title requires comprehensive research, since it is a key element of the deep part of the text content structure and orients the reader in the world of literature and journalism. The scientific novelty. In linguistics there is no consideration of the titles in Grimmsʼ fairy tales, their semantic and structural features. The research material. The titles of the most famous and popular fairy tales of German storytellers from the Kinder- und Hausmärchen collection. In the research the general scientific and linguistic methods were applied: descriptive method, method of classification and systematization, elements of structural and semantic analysis and quantitative calculation. The scope of application. The research can be used in the study and teaching of the style of the German language, pragmatics and text interpretation. The results. The author names the structural features of the titles in Grimmsʼ fairy tales, gives a percentage of the number of title-words, title-phrases, title-sentences, lists their semantic features, focuses on complex words, talking names, numerals, appellatives, diminutive suffixes, as well as on the facts from the plot of the fairy tale that the reader can already learn from the title.