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1. Introduction
dual nature of the proverb: similarity vs diversity of proverbs compared between different languages
differences between the images created by proverbs (queer or exotic animals, plants, weather
conditions, everyday objects, kinship terms, social practices, local foods and dishes stem from the
different places of origin of the individual proverbs and their specific geographical, historical, social
and cultural environments)
the greater the distance in time and place, the greater the differences and peculiarities will be
between the compared proverb corpora and vice versa
certain fundamental human features shared by all the members of homo sapiens species
the uniqueness of any one individual proverb system – entire body of proverbs in a language
the comparative approach: focuses on the similarities between two (or more) sets of the same class
of items
the contrastive approach: mostly concerned with explicating, studying, describing and explaining the
differences between the linguistic items synchronically
in PAREMIOLOGY the distinction is not vivid and instead the term contrastive is used in its broader
meaning for the both approaches: it encompasses the synchronic comparative and contrastive
approaches (ignoring diachronic perspective)
PAREMIOGRAPHY: the practice of compiling proverb dictionaries and proverb collections in one,
two or more languages dates back to the first systems of writing that emerged in ancient
Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt more than five millennia ago
a small proverb collection The Precepts of Ptah-hotep is claimed by its editor to be "the oldest book
in the world", being written in 3440 B.C.
the European (Western) paremiography has been very well documented and covers nearly three
millennia – from the Archaic period of the Ancient Greece civilization to the present day
Wolfgang Mieder contributed to the field of paremiology and paremiography through his abundant
record of bibliographies on the proverb, complete list of all of the major bilingual and multilingual
proverb dictionaries in the main Western European languages
paremiographers are devoted to collecting and classifying the proverbs, whereas paremiologysts
address questions concerning the definition, form, structure, style, content, function, meaning and
value of proverbs
paremiography inevitably entails comparing the semantics of proverbs, therefore the two fields of
study are inseparable and contrastive paremiology arouse from the practical need of human beings
to share their wisdom with others, to learn more about each other, to communicate with people
from other cultures, expanding their intellect and knowledge of the world
contrastive paremiology is primarily preoccupied with such concepts as proverb meaning (sense),
proverb synonyms, semantic equivalence, semantic variation, semantic analogy
The degree of semantic equivalence can be easily measured when the matched proverbs from
different languages are literally the same, e.g.:
(Polish: Człowiek myśli, Pan Bóg kreśli/Człowiek strzela, Pan Bóg kule nosi)
the specific wording of the same direct/literal/denotational/overt meaning and the syntactic
structure of the proverb sentences compared and contrasted
but in the prevailing case of figurative proverbs, the term semantic equivalence will suggest a kind of
sameness which very significantly differs from lexical equivalence of two or more words/strings of
words, in different languages, which have the same denotational/dictionary meanings
the Victorian scholar Richard Chenevix Trench in one of his books illustrates the diverse linguistic
and literary expressions of one and the same thought by quoting proverbs in their original languages
and in English translation
Curses, like chicken, always come home to roost (Turkish) (known today as a regular English proverb)
Ashes always fly back in the face of him that throws them (Yoruba)
it may be
a certain LOGICAL TYPE: implication, comparison, the relation between one and many, or between
the whole and its part/parts
a selected TOPIC or THEME: family, neighbours, friends, death and dying, food
(Every dog had his day, Don’t teach an old dog new tricks)
a GENERAL CONCEPT: time, distance and space, language, man and woman
a larger group of proverbs of animal identity is further divided into subgroups, based on the criterion
of the same basic idea or thought exemplified in a sentence
for example, the idea that an animal, be it a fox, a wolf, a snake, or some other animal, may change
its fur or skin, but not its identity
Estonian; Livonian; Latvian; German; British; Russian; Mari; Mordvin; Komi; Turkish; Aserbaidzhan:
British: A fox may change his heyre but not his minde
Russian, Georgian: A snake might leave its skin, but its heart remains the same
German and Latvian: Die Schlange wechselt wohl die Haut, aber nicht die Giftzähne
the view that proverbs are the genre that best preserves and depicts the typical character of a
nation
the more modern view: proverbs tend to transcend the ethnic and national boundaries
those who share them substantiate their stance by quoting numerous examples of international
proverbs: texts, which have entered the lexicon of many languages and cultures as loan translations,
or have originated simultaneously in different parts of the planet in inexplicable and most
miraculous ways
Richard Trench as an advocate of the older view presents a counter argument in offering a plethora
of examples of Greek, Roman, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Irish, English, Cornish, German, French,
Rabbinical, Persian, Russian texts in their original languages and in English translation, within a view
to emphasizing uniqueness and peculiarity of features of the peoples they represent
Latin sentences:
Conscientia, mille testes [Conscience is [like] a thousand witnesses]
Vox populi, vox dei [The voice of the people [is] the voice of God]
Sermon sin Agostino, olla sin tocino [A sermon without St. Augustine is like a stew without bacon]
[Kill, and thou shall be killed, and they shall kill him who kills thee]
Chi non può fare sua vendetta è debile, chi non vuole è vile
[He who cannot revenge himself is weak, he who will not is vile]
Aspetta tempo e loco à far tua vendetta, che la non si fa mai ben in fretta
[Wait time and place to act thy revenge, for it is never well done in a hurry]
A stone that is fit for the wall, is not left in the way
Trench however also acknowledges cosmopolites: the proverb texts that “seem to have travelled
from land to land, and to have made themselves at home equally in all” and also the ones that “have
commended themselves to almost all people”
Alan Dundes suggested that equivalence should be sought in proverbs which employ different
images while putting across the same message, e.g.:
different terms for the basic thought contained in a single proverb/proverb synonyms/proverb
equivalents or analogues:
thought, basic idea, denotational (direct, literal) meaning, figurative meaning, the sense of a
proverb, explanation, and definition, message, concept, logeme, cultureme
Chesnokova, Savenkova, and Polinichenko have suggested another term for describing proverb
semantics – the logeme: the meaning not only of a single proverb text, but rather of the summarized,
or generalized, basic meaning of a group of similar, thematically close proverbs
subsumed under the single logeme: Speaking is less efficient than doing
the (linguo)cultural concept: “a unit of knowledge and conscience shared by a large group of people
who speak the same language, with a fixed linguistic form (expression), which is marked by distinct
ethnocultural specifics” (Vorkachov)
its variant – the linguistic concept and the discipline – linguistic conceptology – pursues contrastive
studies of PRECEDENT (well-known among a monolingual group of people) texts in two or more
languages, e.g. the proverbs and phraseological units
such texts are culturally meaningful and highly representative of the mentality and worldview of
one particular people
popular characters from folk tales, like Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Beautiful (for the Russian people)
these texts are as a rule marked by much higher semantic (semiotic) density compared to others
the frequency of occurrences of a certain text, phrase or name in speech and writing both
synchronically and diachronically and the degree of its grammatical, lexical and thematical
elaborateness (like variability, synonymy, use of derivatives, conversion, intertextuality)
the article Where cognitive linguistics meets paremiology: a cognitivecontrastive view of selected
English and Croatian proverbs
three groups of proverb equivalents and analogues on fear, love and greed are contrasted based on
the conceptual metaphor and the blending theory to reveal a wider range of linguistic and culture-
specific variation
the aims, objectives and research methods of the cognitive approach are very closely related to the
linguocultural approach
a unit applied in the studies – a cultureme: axiologically marked, verbalised content, explicated
through the question-answer kind of a semantic transformation and represented by a noun or noun
phrase
What does this proverb affirm? and What does this proverb condemn/criticize?
the semantic density of any given cultureme can be ascertained with a much greater degree of
precision by means of this approach evincing in the ratio (the proportion) of all the proverbs
containing this cultureme
one linguoculture taking much greater/less interest in this entity than the other – demonstration of
the hierarchy of the values and anti-values of the people saying these proverbs