Nyukubts songs are a Nenets genre that is often compared to lullaby songs, in particular, to the lullaby of the Russian tradition. These genres can be compared, in particular, due to their belonging to both maternal and children’s folklore – both lullabies and nyukubts songs can be sung by adults for young children and by children themselves for their younger siblings. Despite their frequent comparison, however, these genres have quite marked differences, the most important of which are evident in the contexts in which they are performed. The most important (but not the only) function of lullabies in the Russian tradition can be called ‘putting to sleep’ (according to the terminology of V.V. Golovin). However, for Nenets nyukubtsy, their usage for lulling children to sleep is rather a side feature peculiar to only a small part of songs. Among the function’s characteristic of the Nenets nyukubts songs there are also other functions similar to those identified for lullaby songs of the Russian tradition by V.V. Golovin. Among such functions, in addition to the lulling function, one can mention protective, prognostic, epistemological functions. But the main function for the genre of nyukubts songs seems to be the ‘caressing’ function, which allows the performer of the song to express feelings towards its addressee. The article is devoted to the description of the functions of children’s nyukubts songs.

In the article I will try to prove the existence of the correlation between the occurrence of mythological motifs of opposite content (“Sun – man, Moon – woman”, “Sun – woman, Moon – man”, “Sun and Moon – men”, “Sun and Moon – women”, “Sun – woman”, “Ambiguous Sun”, “Ambiguous Moon”) and the characteristics of the category of grammatical gender in the languages of the peoples of Mongolia, Southern, Western and Eastern Siberia and the Far East. An attempt was made to identify the reasons for the coexistence of motifs of opposite content within the mythological systems of the mentioned peoples. Also, the characters’ nominations were analyzed and compared with the grammatical gender (if exists) of the words “sun” and “moon”. The roles played by the Sun and Moon in specific motifs were analyzed as well. The study is based on the index of mythological motifs by Yu.E. Berezkin (https://ruthenia.ru/folklore/berezkin/). The work considers the peoples of the Altai (groups: Manchu-Tungus [Evens, Evenks]; Mongolic [Buryats, Oirats, Mongols, Daurs]; Turkic [Tuvans, Khakas, Altai, Teleuts, Yakuts]), Uralic (groups: Samoyedic [Nenets, Enets, Nganasans, Selkups]; Finno-Ugric [Khanty, Mansi]) families, as well as Palaeo-Siberian languages (Yenisei family [Kets, Yughs]; Chukchi and Kamchatka group of languages [Koryak, Chukchi, Itelmen]; Yukagir family [forest Yukagirs]). As a result, based on the selected material, it was not possible to unambiguously establish or refute the presence of this correlation. Among the studied peoples, only in the languages of the peoples of the Yenisei language family, the Kets and the Yughs, there is a category of grammatical gender. But the gender of the celestial body in the mythology of these peoples does not coincide with the grammatical gender of the denoting it in their languages. In the mythological systems of more than half of the other peoples there are motifs of opposite content. The inability to say precisely whether this correlation exists is also confirmed by analyzing the roles played by the studied characters.

The article examines the communicative features of oral storytelling about prophetic dreams and communications presented within the story, involving its characters. The material consists of two versions of the story about the same dream recorded by the authors, heard in two different situations. The communicative structure of the series of stories is represented by interactions on three communicative levels: 1) among the participants of the interview – in this case between collectors of folklore and their interlocutor; 2) among the story characters – participants in the events represented; 3) among characters in “stories within a story” – for example, a retelling inside a dream. The scheme of communicative levels of V. Schmid’s artistic narrative has been adapted for analyzing oral storytelling in direct interpersonal communication situations. At each level we consistently examined the figures of communicants (their nominations and addresses) and primary speech genres of communication. One of the most notable features of internal communications is their “openness”, when the living and the dead, distant and close, spirits and people communicate freely. According to our assumption, the subject of stories about prophetic dream is the openness of communication between everyone and everyone. At the level of interpersonal communication between the narrator and the listeners, the story allows to express their metaphysical sensitivity and magical competence.

The article discusses the processes of development of modern musical folklore among the Narym Selkups based on the analysis of the publication “Ob tunes of Narym Selkups” (compiled by V. Tuzakova and I. Korobeynikova, Tomsk, 2015). Russian folklore and Soviet mass song are influencing the modern musical folklore of the southern Selkups, and the creativity of amateur Selkup composers (melodists) is developing. In the works of modern musical folklore, the main marker of national identity is the Selkup language. Manifestations of the “Selkup” musical style (scale, organization of melodic movement) are partially preserved, but new stylistic features come to the fore: arrangements defining the musical style of new songs, instrumental accompaniment, square structural constructions peculiar to modern music and other means of popular musical genres. Onomatopoeia of the voices of animals and birds, which are associated with the traditional taiga landscape for the Selkups and bring the “image of a place” to modern compositions, are widely used in modern folklore works. This allows us to consider the modern musical folklore of the Selkups in the light of the concept of the sounding landscapes of the Arctic.

The article offers an overview of the main scientific works of Elena Sergeevna Novik – а folklorist, anthropologist and researcher of ritual and non-fairy-tale folklore of the peoples of Siberia. This review is divided according to the thematic principle: each section is devoted to the problems that occupied the researcher in a particular period of her academic activity, while the chronological order of the works is preserved within each thematic section. This division allowed not only to depict main theoretical issues, that the researcher dealt with, but also to preserve the logic of their intersections. Among the identified thematic sections one can find, firstly, the studies of fairy tales, which E.S. Novik was engaged in at the dawn of her academic career. Subsequently, the researcher continued the study of similar theoretical problems, but already on the material of the ritual folklore of Siberian peoples, – this transition is reflected in the next section. E.S. Novik was also fascinated by the problem of folklore genre, to which she devoted several works, as well as the study of pragmatics and semiotics of communication. In addition to the parts of the review devoted to the consideration of articles and monographs, the review includes a thematical section displaying E.S. Novik’s visual projects and publications of her works from different years. The review also includes a brief biography of the researcher.