Criteria For Distinguishing Folklore And Paremiological Units

This article systematically examines the theoretical nature, classificatory boundaries, linguistic features, and folkloristic characteristics of folklore and paremiological units. Epic, fairy tale, myth, legend, traditional narrative, folk song, lullaby, humorous anecdote, tall tale, askiya, riddle, tonguetwister, blessing, prayer, curse, proverb, and proverbial saying are compared in terms of their genre status, textual structure, and semantic and pragmatic properties. Paremiological units are identified as a distinctive microsystem within the folklore macrosystem, characterized by brevity, stability, generalization, and repeated communicative use. The article proposes length, narrative structure, predicativity, gnomicity, communicative independence, mode of performance, variation, traditionality, and pragmatic function as criteria for distinguishing folklore and paremiological units