The analysis of the artistic structure of the folklore works promotes deepening of the comprehension of their ideological and aesthetic heritage, national identity, cognitive and educational significance, which predetermines the relevance of the review of the functional specificity of such tropes of the Ossetian ethno-poetics as metaphors and epithets in proverbs, sayings, riddles, good wishes, curses. The scientific novelty of the present work lies in the consideration of the folklore layer, which has not been studied from this perspective so far. The nature of the specifics of the same tropes in related aphoristic subspecies has been studied for the first time. The aim of the work is to study the artistic specifics of the epithet and metaphor in the small genres of the folklore. The research is based on the application of the method of integral analysis of the aphoristic genres of the Ossetian folklore as a single multi-species artistic system, and the comparative-correlative method has proved to be useful for revealing the generality and differences in the nature of poetic paths in different genres of aphorism. The proposed approach has proved the aim of the specific use of tropes in small genres, dictated by minimalist poetics, to prove that epithets here are not only loaded with decorative function, but are rather charged semantically, and logical definitions take on ornamental functions as well. This ambivalent character of the epithet deepens the meaning of the aphoristic phrase and contributes to its laconic formulation. Minimalism is facilitated by the genre-specific use of the metaphor: the metaphor that is absent in the aphoristic text is prompted by the context, the situation. Along with the generally aphoristic nature of the use of tropes, the use of metaphor and epithet in creating imagery in each of the aphoristic subspecies has its own characteristics. Proverbs, through metaphors, make broad generalizations; in the puzzle-metaphor, the connection between the object and the image of the metaphor is weak, arbitrary, and is aimed at making it difficult to guess; in the poetic system of goodwill and curses that have antonymous semantics, as metaphorical images, contrasting phenomena of nature are used. The epithet in proverbs expands and deepens the self-mystical nuances; in riddles, as a rule, it contains specific information about the color, size, shape of the object, contributing to the cliche, and in good wishes and curses it both characterizes the word it attributes and supplies it with some emotional coloring.

Keywords: aphorism, proverb, byword, oath, riddle, goodwill, curse, trope, epithet, metaphor.

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