CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF PROVERBS

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

communication made impossible by the insurmountable cultural differences

which cores of proverbs prevail? those common, species-wide vs those specific

meaningfulness behind the diversity of proverbs used by different language speakers

the uniqueness of any one individual proverb system – entire body of proverbs in a language

2. Comparative and contrastive approach

the comparative approach: focuses on the similarities between two (or more) sets of the same class
of items

takes into account the chronological change of a proverb – diachronic/historical research

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)

3. The beginnings: Contrastive paremiography

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

4. Contrastive paremiology: What is it all about?

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.:

English: Hurry slowly

German: Eile mit Weile

Latin: Festina lente

Polish: Śpiesz się powoli

English: Man proposes, God disposes

Latin: Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit

Spanish: El hombre propone, y Dios dispone

German: Der Mensch denkt, Gott lenkt

Russian: Человек предполагает, а Господь разполагает

Bulgarian: Човек предполага, Господ разполага

(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

The river passed, God forgotten (English)

The river passed, the saint forgotten (Spanish)

The river passed, the saint mocked (Italian)

Give him an inch and he will take a mile (English)

Daj mu palec, a on całą rękę chwyta (Polish)

Call a peasant ‘Brother’, he’ll demand to be called ‘Father’ (Russian)

Reach a peasant your finger, he’ll grasp your fist (Italian)

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)

5. New approaches to contrastive paremiology: tertium comparationis

tertium comparationis: a common stable, invariable frame of reference, a certain agreed-upon

criterion, according to which some specific features of a pair/group of proverbs can be grouped or
classified, and in relation to which they can be compared and contrasted

it may be

a certain LOGICAL TYPE: implication, comparison, the relation between one and many, or between
the whole and its part/parts

a SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE: a question, a statement, an elliptical sentence/some other sentence

pattern

a selected TOPIC or THEME: family, neighbours, friends, death and dying, food

an IMAGE: the image of the fox, the horse, or the dog

(Every dog had his day, Don’t teach an old dog new tricks)

a VALUE: honesty, temperance, loyalty, courage, gratitude

an ANTI-VALUE: wickedness, greed, anger, laziness, folly

a GENERAL CONCEPT: time, distance and space, language, man and woman

some human characteristic

topic/theme:

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:

A wolf may change its fur, but never its manners/heart/teeth

German: Der Fuchs ändert’s Haar und bleibt, was er war

[The fox changes its fur and remains what it was]

British: A fox may change his heyre but not his minde

Armenian; Persian; Aserbaidzhan; Tajik; Turkmen:

A snake may change its skin, but not its mind/manners

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

Russian: Скинула кожу змея, а яд при ней остался

[A snake left its skin, but not its poison]

6. Contrastive paremiology and the ethnic aspect of proverbs

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]

the Spanish proverbs:

Sermon sin Agostino, olla sin tocino [A sermon without St. Augustine is like a stew without bacon]

Matarás, y matarte han, y matarán á quien te matará

[Kill, and thou shall be killed, and they shall kill him who kills thee]

the Italian proverbs:

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]

the French precept:

Prends le premier conseil d’une femme, et non le second

[Take the first advice of a woman, not the second]

the Egyptian warning: Do no good and thou shalt find no evil

the Persian classics: Speech is silvern, silence is golden

the well-known Bulgarian proverb: Дялан камък на път се не оставя

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”

8. New approaches to contrastive paremiology

8.1. The semantic approach

Alan Dundes suggested that equivalence should be sought in proverbs which employ different
images while putting across the same message, e.g.:

He who is bitten by a snake fears even a rope (English)

A scalded cat fears even cold water (French)

Whoever is burned on hot squash blows on the cold yogurt (Greek)

Kto się na gorącym sparzył, ten na zimne dmucha (Polish)

the common thought: a painful experience makes a person overly prudent and cautious

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

Actions speak louder than words

An ounce of practice is worth a pound of precept

Example is better than precept

Deeds will show themselves, and words will pass away

subsumed under the single logeme: Speaking is less efficient than doing

8.2. The linguocultural approach

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

The legend of King Arthur or King Lear (for the English)

the stories of Krali Marco (for Bulgarians)

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)

8.3. The cognitive approach

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

8.4. The culturematic method

an extension to and а further elaboration of the linguocultural method

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

knowledge (+) for Knowledge is power

haste (–) for Haste makes waste

explicated by means of asking two questions:

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