How Proverbs Mean: Semantic Studies in English Proverbs 9783110881974, 3110101963, 0899250378, 9783110101966

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How Proverbs Mean

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 27

Editor

Werner Winter

Mouton Publishers Berlin · New York · Amsterdam

How Proverbs Mean Semantic Studies in English Proverbs

by

Neal R. Norrick

Mouton Publishers Berlin · New York · Amsterdam

Dr. Neal R. Norrick Kassel University Semantics, Phraseology, Pragmatics

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Norrick, Neal R. How proverbs mean. (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 27) Bibliography: P. Includes Index. 1. Proverbs, English — History and criticism. 2. Proverbs — History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. PN6421.N66 1985 398'.9'21 85-4837 ISBN 3-11-010196-3 (Berlin) ISBN 0-89925-037-8 (New York)

CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek

Norrick, Neal R.: How proverbs mean : semant. studies in English proverbs / by Neal R. Norrick. — Berlin ; New York; Amsterdam : Mouton, 1985. (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 27) ISBN 3-11-010196-3 NE: Trends in linguistics / Studies and monographs

Printed on acid free paper. © Copyright 1985 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form — by photoprint, microfilm, or any other means — nor transmitted nor translated into a machine language without written permission from Mouton Publishers, Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin. Typesetting and Printing: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin. — Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer Buchgewerbe GmbH, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

For Nick and his Mother

_ c r ret a c e

To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings. Proverbs 1,6

This study originated in a seminar on linguistic aspects of English proverbs which Winfried Nöth and I conducted at Kassel University in the summer term of 1981. I am grateful to the participants in that seminar for their stimulating questions and comments. Special thanks go to Ursula Brauner for sharing her data on proverbs in the press. I am indebted to American and British lectors in Kassel and Würzburg for their intuitions about proverb meanings and uses. Especially Thomas J. Minnes provided valuable discussion of matters proverbial. Hans Dechert often shared instructive insights on proverbial materials from a psycholinguistic point of view, for which I thank him. Many thanks are due to Volker Zähme for preparing the diagrams and to Monika Gunkel for typing the pre-final manuscript. I am grateful for the proofreading efforts of Ingeborg Witter. A debt of gratitude is owed to Herbert E. Brekle, Wilhelm Koller, Hans Petersen and Martin Schulze, who read and commented on the pre-final version, and particularly to Winfried Nöth for discussing various drafts of the work from its inception. I am finally and most affectionately grateful to my wife Petra for her careful proofreading, her timely encouragement and her unflagging willingness to listen. Gerbrunn, June 1984

N.R.N.

Contents Preface

vii

Chapter 1 1.1 1.2 1.2.1 1.2.2 1.3 1.4

Introduction Aim and focus Why study proverbs? Why study proverb meaning? Why study proverbs as texts? The corpus Organization

Chapter 2 2.0 2.1 2.1.1 2.1.1.1

Proverbs in texts and interactions Introduction How proverbs mean in texts Proverbs in conversation Proverbs in the Svartvik and Quirk (1980) corpus 2.1.1.2 Proverbs in the Hain (1951) corpus 2.1.2 Proverbs in literature 2.1.3 Proverbs in the press 2.2 How proverbs mean in interactions 2.2.1 Proverbs as inventorized units 2.2.2 Proverbs as traditional items of folklore 2.3 Summary

Chapter 3 3.0 3.1 3.1.1 3.1.1.1 3.1.1.2 3.1.2 3.1.3

Defining the proverb Introduction Traditional proverb definitions Proverbs are self-contained Proverbs as (propositional) statements Proverbs as (grammatical) sentences Proverbs are pithy Proverbs are traditional

1 1 2 4 5 8 9 11 11 12 12 12 14 18 22 24 25 28 30 31 31 31 32 32 33 36 39

X

Contents

3.1.4 3.1.5 3.1.6 3.1.6.1 3.1.6.2 3.2 3.2.1 3.2.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.5.1 3.5.1.1 3.5.1.2 3.5.1.3 3.5.2 3.5.2.1 3.5.2.2

Proverbs have didactic content Proverbs have fixed form Proverbs have poetic features Prosody in proverbs Figuration in proverbs Structural proverb definitions Quadripartite structures Topic-comment structures Supercultural versus ethnographic genre Definition via feature matrix A linguistically founded proverb definition Feature matrix definition The properties The feature matrix Feature priorities for the proverb Genre definition Ethnographic definition of the proverb Supercultural definition of the proverb

41 43 46 46 48 51 51 55 58 59 65 65 67 72 74 76 77 78

Chapter 4 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.2.3.1 4.2.3.2 4.3

Literal proverb meaning Introduction Why literal readings for proverbs? Ungrammatical proverbs Radically elliptical proverbs Formulaic proverbs Archaic and lectal proverbs Lectal lexis Lectal syntax Summary

81 81 82 84 85 92 96 96 97 99

Chapter 5 5.0 5.1 5.1.1 5.1.2 5.1.3 5.1.4 5.1.5 5.2

Figurative proverb meaning Introduction Research on proverbial figures Seitel (1969) Maranda (1971) Barley (1972) Zolkovsky (1978) Summary and consequences Synecdochic proverbs

101 101 102 102 103 105 106 107 109

Contents

5.2.1 5.2.2 5.3 5.3.1 5.3.1.1 5.3.1.2 5.3.1.3 5.3.2 5.4 5.4.1 5.4.2 5.5 5.6 5.7

xi

Scenic species-genus synecdoche Nominal (part-whole) synecdoche Metaphoric proverbs Predicate extension metaphor Metaphoric anthropomorphization Metaphoric animation Metaphoric concretization Object-attribute metaphor Metonymie proverbs Instrument-function metonymy Speech-speaker metonymy Hyperbolic proverbs Paradoxical proverbs Conclusions

110 115 117 117 120 121 123 125 128 128 130 131 134 137

Chapter 6 6.0 6.1 6.1.1 6.1.2 6.2 6.2.1 6.2.1.1 6.2.1.2 6.2.1.3 6.2.2

The proverb inventory Introduction Inventory entries Representing readings in entries Relating readings in entries Relations between entries The types of relations Sameness of SPIs Implication between SPIs Oppositeness of SPIs Representing relations between entries

145 145 146 146 150 155 156 156 160 162 164

Chapter 7

Conclusions and directions for research

169

Appendix A: The annotated F-Corpus Appendix B: Proverbs in four Shakespearian plays

175 197

Bibliography

203

General Index

211

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Aim and focus This study aims to describe how proverbs mean. It focusses on the proverb as a discrete text rather than as part of a larger text or interaction. As an inventorized unit belonging to a particular language, a proverb has its own customary meaning, its standard proverbial interpretation (SPI). 1 This SPI may coincide with the literal reading of the proverb, in which case the proverb is said to be literal. The proverb Like father, like son counts as literal because its SPI coincides with its literal reading 'father and son are alike'. But the SPI may also differ from the literal reading, in which case the proverb is said to be figurative. The proverb No rose without a thorn counts as figurative because its SPI 'there is no pleasant thing without some unpleasant aspect' differs

1. Speakers of a language use its proverbs — like its phrasal idioms, collocations and lexical items proper — in certain regular ways with certain meanings. The SPIs in this study derive from exemplifications and comments in the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Wilson, ed. 1970), which served as my corpus, and from my informants' responses; see § 1.3 for more on both. I simply formulate SPIs in regularized everyday English rather than in logical formulas, schemata, bundles of features or something similar, since this study primarily concerns relations between readings for proverbs rather than methods of semantic representation. I personally favor frame theoretical semantic representations ά la Rumelhart & Ortony (1977), Ortony (1979 a), cf. Minsky (1975), and I demonstrate their value in describing figurative proverbs in § 5.2.1.

2

1

Introduction

from its literal reading 'there is no rose without a thorn'. Both literal and figurative proverbs along with their SPIs and their literal readings make up the subject matter of this investigation. SPIs and literal readings for figurative proverbs can be related in various ways. These correspond to various types of figures. And the description of these figures constitutes a central concern of this study. This description not only provides a basis for the classification of proverbs but also contributes to our understanding of regular figurative relations in natural language generally. Like words, idioms and other recurrent linguistic units, the proverbs of a language must be stored in some kind of inventory. This inventory can be set up to represent relations between the entries for the different proverbs; and the entries themselves can be formulated to represent relations between SPIs and literal readings of individual proverbs. Which relations to present between and within entries in the proverb inventory, and how best to represent them are problems for which this investigation seeks solutions as well.

1.2 Why study proverbs? The aim and focus just outlined for this investigation raise particular issues of justification in addition to the general question of why to study proverbs at all. First, why study proverb meaning instead of, say, proverb syntax, prosodic patterns etc.? And second, why study proverbs as texts instead of proverbs in texts or in interactions? These two more specific issues come in for treatment after a consideration of the general question of why to study proverbs at all. In response to this last question — to the extent that it is distinct from that of why to study language generally — several reasons may be cited. The first reason to study proverbs is simply that they are there as a part of language. Like simplex words and idioms, proverbs are form-meaning units which must be included in any complete language description.

1.2 Why study proverbs?

3

A second justification for studying proverbs lies in their special status as both form-meaning units and analyzable complexes of independently occurring units. Proverbs, at least all figurative proverbs, are idioms in that they have SPIs which are distinct from the literal readings which would be assigned to them on the basis of straightforward compositional semantic principles. 2 Like compound words, phrasal idioms and morphologically complex meaning units generally, proverbs exhibit different types of semantic relations between their literal composite readings and their SPIs. These relations may be of various figurative types, which makes proverbs interesting as examples of inventorized figures. A description of the common types of proverbial figures indicates which synecdochic, metaphoric and metonymic relations are regular in natural language. A third reason to study proverbs is their unique combination of properties associated with the simplex word, the complete sentence qua textual chunk and the complete text. In addition to uniting properties of the word and the sentence as morphologically complex form-meaning units, proverbs unite properties of the sentence and the text. Proverbs occur in larger texts such as everyday conversations, newspaper editorials and sermons; and they occur as texts complete in themselves, e. g. as group slogans, house inscriptions and along with other sayings in anthologies. Proverbs and cliches are the only traditional items with this kind of distribution. Non-traditional items with similar properties are aphorisms, epigrams and specially fabricated slogans. Further justifications for studying proverbs consist in their traditional status, their rustic imagery, their prosodic form, their

2. Compositional semantic principles are just those needed to assign semantic representations to regular syntactic structures on the basis of the lexical meanings of their constituents; they are insufficient for syntactically or semantically irregular structures and non-lexicalized meanings; chapters 4 and 5 are concerned with providing readings for these latter, irregular structures. I assume the existence of rules for assigning semantic representations in regular cases, but I do not argue for any particular type here (cf. Note 1 just above). I intend my results to be i n c o r p o r a t e into any system for assigning semantic representations.

4

1

Introduction

didactic value etc. But these properties of proverbs are not problematized in any direct or systematic fashion below, so I shall not discuss them in any more detail here. Let us turn instead to the first of the two more specific questions of justification posed above.

1.2.1 Why study proverb meaning? According to the foregoing, proverbs can be profitably studied from several points of view; I certainly do not intend to disparage any of them, but simply to explain my decision to concentrate on meaning in proverbs. As already indicated, a study of meaning in proverbs will include a consideration of their figurative possibilities. Since proverbs are not only linguistic items inventorized in some language, but also items of folklore traditional in some culture, figures which recur in them should illustrate regular types of synecdochic, metaphoric and metonymic transfer standard in language and natural in associative thought processes generally. So a taxonomy of regular proverbial figures contributes to our overall understanding of figurative processes. But figurative relations between SPIs and literal readings are not the only reason to study proverb meaning: the literal readings are themselves of interest, especially those of formulaic and/or severely elliptical proverbs. Proverbs adhering to standard formulas such as like X like Y and the X-er the Y-er, e. g. Like father, like son and The fairer the paper, the fouler the blot, are ungrammatical according to regular syntactic principles; Quirk and Greenbaum (1973:205) call such proverbs "grammatically anomalous." In spite of this, they must receive literal readings as well as SPIs. The problem of how these readings can be generated is relevant for both syntax and semantics. The problem of providing readings for radically elliptical proverbs is just as relevant for both syntax and semantics. Proverbs like Forewarned, forearmed and Fast bind, fast find are elliptical rather than formulaic, but nevertheless ungrammatical according to regular syntactic principles. Either these regular

1.2 Why study proverbs?

5

syntactic principles or the regular semantic principles must be revised or expanded to handle ungrammatical formulaic and elliptical proverbs. Another reason to study proverb meaning lies in the semantic relations between proverbs. If the meanings of simplex words can coincide with, imply, complement and exclude one another, then presumably those of whole proverbs can as well. If relations traditionally recognized in lexical semantics can be discovered in or extended to pairs of proverbs, then this has implications not only for the proverbs in question, but for the relations themselves.

1.2.2 Why study proverbs as texts? One justification for studying proverbs as texts rather than proverbs in texts or interactions is simply that proverbs can and do occur as texts, and not only in larger texts. Besides being anthologized as discrete little texts, proverbs occur as complete texts in group slogans and house inscriptions, as noted above, but also accompanying pictures in cartoons, advertisements etc. In each of these environments a proverb has a certain interactional and semiotic textual significance bound up with the picture and/or other features of the context, but its meaning qua text predominates in most cases. And this meaning certainly deserves description in its own right. The predominance of proverb meaning qua text within contexts like those just enumerated also justifies the study of proverbs as texts. Even when it occurs as an integral part of a larger spoken or written text, the independent meaning of a proverb plays a major role in determining its semantic contribution to the text as a whole. So the study of proverbs as texts is justified as a preliminary to or a step within the analysis of proverbs in texts and interactions. Further reasons for studying proverbs as texts rather than proverbs in texts and interactions are connected with the question of corpus and the practical availability of data. Before one can begin to examine any set of texts for examples of proverbs, one must already have some recognition test. One

6

1

Introduction

could always argue that native speakers of a language know which strings of words count as proverbs in that language. Then one could simply read texts and pick out the proverbs in them. But if proverbs are traditional items, some stability through time must be guaranteed. Such stability can only be ensured by identifying the same string of words in successive texts separated in time; and even then the personal judgment of the researcher must play some role. Ultimately the best check on the authenticity of a potential proverb identified in a text is its presence in an anthology: this assures that the unit in question has enjoyed currency for a period of time and that others recognize it as a proverb. Of course, if an anthology must provide the test of authenticity for potential proverbs gleaned from some corpus of texts, one might simply begin with the anthology itself, in which case the study of proverbs as texts again seems most appropriate. Even assuming some recognition test for proverbs from texts, the problem of choosing a corpus remains. There are two fundamental types of corpus which could serve as a data base for a study of proverbs in texts: either naturally occurring spoken texts or composed written texts. Recordings and/or transcriptions of naturally occurring dialogue have been practically inaccessible until recently and they remain rare. I worked through the entire A Corpus of English Conversation (Svartvik and Quirk 1980) looking for proverbs and found only one true example and one marginal one in its 43,165 lines and 891 pages (see §2.1.1.1). A perusal of the 1028 lines of transcribed conversation in Crystal and Davy (1975) for the sake of comparison turned up no examples whatsoever. This convinced me that a systematic investigation of proverbs in free conversation would require more recorded or transcribed conversations than are at present available and the long-term efforts of a research team. The only empirical investigation of proverbs in freely occurring dialogue I am aware of is Hain's (1951) study based on data she collected while living among native dialect speakers in the Oberhessian village of Ulfa from 1938 to 1943. Hain's data do not suffice for a complete systematic taxonomy of interactional or textual proverb types, but they do indicate some

ί.2

Why study proverbs?

7

general tendencies, and I return to a consideration of Hain's results for my purposes below in § 2.1.1.2. The other potential corpus for a taxonomy of proverb types would consist of written texts. Past studies of proverbs in written texts have been based on literary texts (see Mieder 1978 c for bibliography), newspapers (see e.g. Lüthi 1970 and Mieder 1978a) and advertisements (see e.g. Mieder 1977, 1978b). Although some literary texts have been examined for the proverbs they contain, and although these data are available (see e. g. Schmidt-Hidding 1962 on various English authors' use of proverbs and other idiomatic units, and Mieder 1978 c for a complete bibliography), literary texts create problems of analysis beyond the scope of linguistic investigation proper, e.g. (1) the function of proverbs in dialogue for purposes of characterization; (2) their function in dialogue versus that in monologue, asides etc.; (3) their function in neutral description versus that in authorial comment, (4) in third person versus first person narrative, (5) in third person versus first person interior monologue etc. Although the first two points hold for drama as well as for narrative, drama at least avoids the latter three problems, besides the fact that it approaches everyday conversation, the natural domain of the proverbs, more closely than narrative. This fact and the ready availability of literature on Shakespeare's use of proverbial materials, especially Tilley's (1950) monumental Shakespeare Index, led me to base my modest empirical investigation of proverbs in literature on Shakespearian plays. I report on the results in §2.1.2 below. Newspapers again present the problem of amassing a corpus large enough for anything but anecdotal treatment. I examined the front and editorial pages of random copies of the International Herald Tribune for nine months at the rate of one or two copies per week, and have discovered only three sayings, of which only two are listed as proverbs in the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Wilson, ed. 1970; henceforth ODEP; see §2.1.3). In five randomly selected issues of Time, Ursula Brauner, a student in Kassel, turned up only two examples of proverbs, both of which were altered from their standard, anthologized forms (see § 2.1.3 for details).

8

1 Introduction

So various theoretical and practical considerations justify the study of proverbs as texts, and point in the direction of an anthology of proverbs as a corpus. This naturally leads me to the following comments on my chosen corpus in the next section.

1.3 The corpus In order to ensure the currency though time necessary for a traditional item, and to eliminate idiosyncratic experience and personal preference from the identification process, I have chosen to use the ODEP as my corpus in this study; I have singled out a small portion of this corpus, which I call the FCorpus, for special attention. The F-Corpus consists of the first 200 items under the letter F in the ODEP; the letter F was determined by lot. Because the ODEP lists variants together within a single entry, the 200 items of the F-Corpus correspond to the first 172 entries under the letter F. My numbered and annotated version of the F-Corpus appears entire in Appendix A below. The decision to concentrate on an easily surveyed sub-corpus is based on two considerations. First, a small enough corpus can be treated completely: every proverb in the F-Corpus will be assigned a complete entry in the sample proverb inventory in Appendix A according to the conventions established in chapter 6, and each item that fails to meet the proverb definition elaborated in chapter 3 will be characterized as to why it fails. Second, the complete treatment of a manageable corpus with no discontinuities facilitates comparison and testing of my results by the reader. Since the ODEP lists cliches, proverbial phrases and proverbial similes along with proverbs proper (cf. ODEP: Introduction, vii), the 200 items of the F-Corpus will not necessarily all be true proverbs. In fact, only 141 of them count as proverbs on the definition to be developed in chapter 3. There the proverb

1.4 Organization

9

will be distinguished from the non-didactic cliche, the incomplete proverbial phrase (including the proverbial simile), the larger Wellerism and other genres. By contrast, a proverb expressing a superstition, a weather maxim or something similar still counts as a true proverb for my purposes, to be more exact as a superstition or whatever in proverb form. SPIs for examples are derived directly from the ODEP when they are given there. Otherwise they had to be deduced from the contextualizations and comments the ODEP offers. Failing both these possibilities, I relied on my own intuitions and those of several informants, viz. a group of American and British native speakers in Kassel and Würzburg. I consulted the same informants for judgments on paraphrases, synonymy etc. In some instances I have altered spellings from the corpus in accordance with U. S. American conventions and punctuation in the interest of consistency.

1.4 Organization The remainder of this study is organized as follows. Chapter 2 concerns proverbs in texts and interactions. By briefly discussing those aspects of proverb meaning which go beyond their meaning as discrete texts, it clears the way for the following chapters, which focus on the meaning of proverbs as texts exclusively. Thus chapter 2 rounds out the picture of proverb meaning presented in the balance of this study. In chapter 3, I review past attempts to define the proverb, before going on to develop a new, linguistically founded definition of the proverb. Since definitional criteria proposed for the proverb run the gamut from syntax through semantics to pragmatics, chapter 3 also provides a survey of the literature on proverbs to date. Chapter 4 focusses on the literal readings of proverbs. The semantic analysis of a proverb must begin with its literal reading, because the relation of the SPI to the literal reading determines

10

1

Introduction

whether and in what way the proverb is figurative. Consequently, both literal and figurative proverbs must be assigned literal readings. As long as a proverb has a regular syntactic structure, providing a literal reading for it presents no special problem, but many proverbs exhibit formulaic structures, radical ellipsis and dialectal or archaic grammar. Chapter 4 shows how literal readings can be constructed for proverbs of all these kinds. Chapter 5 defines the standard types of figures in proverbs; in particular it discusses the various types of relations holding between the SPIs and literal readings of proverbs. Following a review of the literature on figures in proverbs, chapter 5 contains a taxonomy of proverb figures in the F-Corpus based on traditional rhetorical categories and contemporary semantic principles. Chapter 6 concerns the proverb inventory. It pulls together various strands of the analysis to this point, because it amalgamates surface structures, literal readings and SPIs along with the relations between them into inventory entries for proverbs. In addition to relations between structures and readings within entries, relations from one entry to the other are discussed, viz. relations of sameness, unidirectional implication and oppositeness between SPIs. In chapter 7 I review the results of this investigation, draw conclusions from them and suggest some directions for future research on proverbs.

Chapter 2

Proverbs in texts and interactions

2.0 Introduction The aim and focus of this study have been stated and justified: to describe how proverbs mean as texts. In order to better delineate the subject matter of how proverbs mean as texts, this chapter discusses the converse matter of how proverbs mean in texts and interactions. The discussion should serve not only to clarify what the analysis of proverbs as texts will not include, but also to suggest some possible avenues of investigation and some tentative conclusions about proverbs in texts and interactions. The first section §2.1 treats proverbs in texts, while §2.2 treats proverbs in interactions. Whereas the former illustrates the specific ways proverbs hook up with texts in concrete examples, the latter seeks to describe the general interactional significance common to proverbs in all kinds of situations. The two sections represent two points of view rather than two separate objects of study. Texts such as novels provide a basis for (potential) interaction; texts such as riddles define an interaction; and texts such as conversations arise as/in interactions. Interactions depend on and/or produce texts in various ways. So a proverb or any other portion of a text is at once in a text and in an interaction. As Halliday (1977, 1978 and elsewhere) would put it, a proverb means in various ways simultaneously: textually, interactionally (his inter personally) and ideationally. The ideational mode of meaning is what I

12

2 Proverbs

in texts and

interactions

want to get at in investigating proverbs as texts independent of textual and interactional environment; the other two modes of meaning appear only in texts and interactions.

2.1 How proverbs mean in texts As indicated in § 1.2.21 have empirically investigated the corpus of conversation in Svartvik and Quirk (1980) as well as Hain's (1951) conversational data, and I report on the results in § 2.1.1.1 and §2.1.1.2. For purposes of comparison, I also studied the proverbs in several Shakespearian plays; and I describe my conclusions in §2.1.2 on proverbs in drama. Finally I review the results of my investigation of proverbs from the International Herald Tribune and Time under the heading of proverbs in the press in § 2.1.3.

2.1.1 Proverbs in conversation The fundamentally conversational nature of the proverb has been taken for granted by such authors as Hain (1951) and Taylor (1962), and made explicit use of by Bascom (1965: 69), Seitel (1969: 145) and Green (1975), but only Abrahams (1968 b; 1969) names it as a defining property as such. Abrahams defines the proverb as a traditional conversational genre along with the curse, taunt, boast etc. Given that the proverb is essentially conversational, proverbs in conversation provide a natural point of departure for a study of proverbs in texts generally.

2.1.1.1 Proverbs in the Svartvik and Quirk (1980) corpus The only complete proverb quoted as such in the 43,165 lines of transcribed conversation in the Svartvik and Quirk (1980) corpus occurs in the context of three men A, a, Β discussing

2.1 How proverbs mean in texts

13

home-brewed beer as follows (1980: 196, S. 1.7; Svartvik and Quirk's End of time unit is indicated by a period, but all other symbols and numbers are omitted). A well you [trA] I mean you try a bottle of it. I'll try and I'm going to make another one. a it's a can't tell stork from butter situation isn't it A well look Β yeah A (laughs) the proof of the pudding's in the eating is. I'm going to buy a new kit tomorrow. For [ra] to get it ready for Christmas. The proof of the pudding's in the eating makes an evaluative comment on the immediate situation, which I take to include remarks made by the other participants in a conversation. Its cohesion with the surrounding context is at the semantic level, rather than based on syntactic cohesive devices a la Halliday and Hasan (1976). The proverb generalizes inferentially from the concrete situation, avoiding reference to particulars in it. It is further coextensive with a complete tone unit; it represents a potentially complete utterance. When A goes on talking, he changes the topic and begins a new, again potentially independent conversational turn. This turns out to be a fairly standard constellation of properties for proverbs in conversation, as we shall be seeing below. I call proverbs occurring in this way evaluative comments. A second, apparently proverbial utterance can be seen in the following passage from a conversation between two men A, Β discussing financing in the university (Svartvik and Quirk 1980: 63, S. 1.2.). Β fine. I mean it's not that I want to A no. no no no. no. oh no. but it seems to me absolutely, fixed now. Β and I'd rather have it some ten million in the hand, than than than [öa] one million in the bush. [a:m] but A yes. yes of course. Β I think this is highly unlikely, and [a] I I'm I'm personally, assuming that [a:] a million in the bush is more is more likely to happen.

14

A Β A Β

2 Proverbs

in texts and

interactions

yes. yes. literally. yeah. in the bush. (laughs) yes. I think I know

Here the proverb A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush presumably served as a template of sorts for B's utterance. The proverb provides the speaker with both a syntactic structure X in the hand (is worth) Y in the bush for his utterance and a semantic frame for the comparison he wants to make. The use of proverbs as syntactic and semantic templates for utterances will be taken up again in the discussion of proverbs in drama § 2.1.2 and in the press § 2.1.3 below. Probably the academic context of most conversations Svartvik and Quirk record accounts for the low frequency of proverbs in them. The Hain (1951) corpus is presumably more typical of everyday conversation about quotidian matters.

2.1.1.2 Proverbs in the Hain (1951) corpus Hain (1951: 32 — 70) cites in numbered sections and with their concrete situations of occurrence sixty utterances of proverbs, not counting Wellerisms and simple weather maxims. Of these sixty utterances, thirty-seven or about 63 % count as evaluative comments like the first example from the Svartvik and Quirk (1980) corpus cited above. The initial proverb (Hain 1951: 32 — 33) is a case in point, and it should suffice for illustrative purposes here; the italics and German glosses are in Hain (1951), but the English translations are my own. Zwei ältere Bäuerinnen unterhalten sich über den Junglehrer des Dorfes, seine Leistung in der Schule und sein karges Gehalt. Besonders Frau X. weiß Bescheid, sie kennt ihn und seine bescheidenen Verhältnisse. X.: Er ess hoard gescheit! (Er ist sehr klug.) K. lauscht zunächst nachdenklich und sagt dann langsam: Aich saan als, wer de Hoawwern vedint hot, kritt en näid. (Ich sage immer, wer den Hafer verdient hat, kriegt ihn nicht.) Darauf X. lebhaft zustimmend: Joa, so ess!

2.1 How proverbs mean in texts

15

Das Thema ist damit endgültig abgeschlossen, der Einzelfall ist ins Allgemeine erhoben. [Two elderly farm women are talking about the new teacher in the village, what he has accomplished in the school and his meager wages. Especially Mrs. X. is informed. She knows him and is familiar with his modest living conditions. X.: He's very bright! K. listens at first reflecting and then says slowly: / always say, he who earns the oats doesn't get them. X. agrees energetically: Yeh, that's right! The topic is thus closed for good, the individual case has been raised to the general level.] With the proverb Wer de Hoawwern vedint hot, kritt en näid Κ. makes an evaluative comment with didactic tone on the topic of conversation. As in the previous example, this proverb is cohesive with the context only on the semantic level: wer must be interpreted generally rather than with reference to er in the preceding utterance. Again the proverb is coextensive with K's complete conversational turn, with a single sentence, statement and speech act. As Hain notes, it raises the concrete case at issue to a general level. Another fifteen proverbs, or exactly 25 % of the sixty in the Hain (1951) corpus, are statements within longer stretches of speech. They commonly (eight of the fifteen) count as summaries of narratives or arguments, e.g. Hain (1951: 33, (2) b). Die etwa fünfzigjährige Kleinbäuerin Β. erzählte, wie sie viel Unglück mit den Kühen hatte. Als aber im letzten Jahr wiederum eine verkalbte, wurden alle Tiere versichert. Sie schloß ihre erregte Erzählung ruhig, fast resigniert: Wann's Kend gehowwe ess, gitt's Gey adderlaut! (Wenn das Kind aus der Taufe gehoben ist, gibt's Gevatterleute.) [The approximately fifty year old farm woman B. was talking about the trouble she had had with her cows. But when last year another lost its calf, she had had all the cattle insured. She ended her narrative quietly, almost resignedly: Once the child's been baptized there are godparents!\ Although this proverb serves as the summary of a narrative, it nevertheless exhibits no syntactic cohesion with the preceding text. If uttered by a second speaker in response to the narrative, the proverb would classify as an evaluative comment parallel

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to the previous example. Instead the speaker cites a potentially independent conversational turn within a longer speech as an evaluative comment on her own narrative. The other seven of the fifteen proverbs embedded in longer speeches serve to state or support positions in arguments. An example of this kind from Hain (1951: 48) is: Familienehre verteidigt die alte Großmutter D., die von der "Mußheirat" eines Mädchens erzählt, dessen Eltern den Schwiegersohn ablehnen. Däi Aale schenn. Däi wenn den ned huu. Mr derf sech näid u f f s Maul haje. Des batt naud. Bei uns woar's aach suu. (Die Alten schimpfen. Die wollen den nicht haben. Man darf sich nicht selbst aufs Maul schlagen. Das nützt nichts. Bei uns war's auch so.) [Old grandmother D. defends the honor of the family; she is talking about the "shotgun wedding" of a girl whose parents reject the son-in-law. The parents grumble. They don't want to have him. You shouldn't hit yourself in the mouth. That doesn't help. The same thing happened to us.] Again the proverb Mr derf sech näid u f f s Maul hajei s cohesive with the surrounding text only semantically: a potentially independent conversational turn occurs as a general statement in a longer speech. It serves as a value judgment and premiss in the course of the ongoing argument. Proverbs functioning in this and the foregoing way I call evaluative arguments. One further type of proverb function in the Hain (1951) corpus must be mentioned. In addition to the thirty-seven evaluative comments and the fifteen evaluative arguments in longer speeches, the corpus contains eight, or about 13%, directly applied proverbs without primarily evaluative function (although they are evaluative-didactic in ideational meaning; cf. §3.1.4). I call a proverb directly applied if its SPI fits the situation directly rather than commenting on it evaluatively; the proverb may even be more or less idiomatically bound up with the situation in question in Saddock's (1972) sense of being a speech act idiom; cf. Taylor (1962: 129 ff.) on conventional phrases. The proverb Berk en Doal kumme ned sesamme, awwer di Mensche appears to function as an at least partially conventional

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leave-taking formula in the example below (Hain 1951: 38); its straightforward literal reading applies to the situation directly. Bei meinem endgültigen Abschied von Ulfa reichte ich der jungen Bäuerin J. die Hand, mit der ich besonders verbunden war. Fast feierlich sagte sie: Wer waas, wammer sich emol wirrer sieht? Berk en Doal kumme ned sesamme, awwer di Mensche. (Berg und Tal kommen nicht zusammen, aber die Menschen!) Es lag darin die tröstende Aussicht auf ein Wiedersehen. [When I left Ulfa for good I shook hands with the young farm woman J., to whom I had been especially attached. Almost solemnly she said to me: Who knows when we'll meet again? The mountain and the valley don't meet, but people do! In her words lay the consoling possibility of meeting again.] Note even here how the proverb generalizes from the concrete situation to a more abstract level, avoiding particular reference and syntactic cohesion with the text/context. In a further example from Hain (1951: 52) the figurative SPI of Wammer vom Hoas schwätzt, kimmt er aus de Hegge is idiomatically bound up with the situation described, viz. the person a group of people are discussing appears on the scene (cf. the English proverb Speak of the devil and he will appear). Das Bauernmädchen Μ. tritt in das Haus der Freundin, wo gerade einige Mädchen zusammensitzen und allerlei Dorfneuigkeiten austauschen. Soeben hat man von M.'s Liebschaft erzählt und empfangt nun die Ahnungslose mit schallendem Gelächter. Auf ihre Frage tönt es ihr mehrstimmig entgegen: Wammer vom Hoas schwätzt, kimmt er aus de Hegge. (Wenn man vom Hasen schwätzt, kommt er aus der Hecke.) [Farm girl Μ. enters the home of a girl-friend, where several girls are sitting together exchanging the newest gossip from the village. They had just been talking about M.'s current liaison and now greet her with resounding laughter. Her question is answered in chorus with: Speak of the hare and he comes out of the hedge.] Clearly hares and hedges are not at issue in the situation described, so no syntactic cohesion with the text/context is

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possible. The proverb fits the context only because of its SPI 'when one speaks of a person, he appears on the scene', again a generalization of the concrete situation. I have illustrated proverbs in the Hain (1951) corpus functioning as evaluative comments, as evaluative arguments within longer speeches and as directly applied proverbs. Hain includes no instances of proverbs used as templates, as illustrated from the Svartvik and Quirk (1980) corpus in the immediately preceding section. By way of summary, a majority of proverbs in free conversation function as syntactically independent evaluative comments with a didactic tone. Far less commonly but in second place, proverbs occur as evaluative arguments within longer speeches. Such proverbs either state or support positions in arguments, or they summarize them; they too are fundamentally evaluative in character and often independent in syntactic form. A smallish number of proverbs apply directly to a situation and lack clear evaluative function, but even these proverbs remain syntactically independent of their text/context: examples often classify as literally or figuratively bound to the particular situation in more or less idiomatic fashion. Generalizing from the data on proverbs in free conversation described so far, proverbs are characteristically: (1) complete conversational turns syntactically independent of their text/context; (2) semantically general and evaluative; (3) functionally comments on the immediate situation with a didactic tone. These conclusions from the data on proverbs in context have consequences for the definition of the proverb elaborated in chapter 3. I proceed to the topics of proverbs in literature and proverbs in the press in the following sections.

2.1.2 Proverbs in literature The fundamentally conversational nature of the proverb noted in §2.1.1 suggests a look at proverbs in drama as a first approach to proverbs in literature generally. Drama is also preferable to other literary forms for a study of proverbs for

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reasons outlined in § 1.2.2 above. I have chosen Shakespearian plays for investigation in order to make use of the incomparable index of proverbs in the works of Shakespeare compiled by Tilley (1950); but see now the revised version in Dent (1981). From the Shakespeare canon I have selected an early history play (King Richard the Third: RICH), a middle comedy (As You Like It: AY LI) and two middle to late tragedies (King Lear: LEAR and Macbeth) in order to ensure an ample and sufficiently varied corpus. As Schmidt-Hidding (1962: 27 ff.) points out, Tilley's (1950) Shakespeare Index identifies not only proverbs but also allusions to proverbs, proverbial and proverbial-looking topoi and motifs, so one must be careful in using it. I consequently required of proverbial material recognized by Tilley (1950) that it appear in substantially the same form as a proverb in the ODEP. I also disregarded proverbs in songs and those spread over two or more speeches. I have attempted no systematic study of Shakespeare's use of proverbs as templates, but refer the reader to Schmidt-Hidding (1962: 28 ff.). The proverbs in the Shakespearian plays I investigated fall into the same categories as the proverbs in free conversation reviewed so far, although the percentages of the two major types are practically reversed. Of the twenty total proverbs in the four plays taken together, only six ( = 3 0 %) are evaluative comments, while fourteen ( = 70%) are evaluative arguments. All the directly applied sayings in the four plays studied are situationally bound cliches rather than proverbs proper. After illustrating both types I offer two examples of proverbs as templates. The remaining proverbs in the four plays are analyzed in Appendix B. All references are to Harrison, ed. (1948), and sometimes differ slightly from those in Tilley (1950). In RICH II iv 37 (Act, scene, line) one finds the proverb Pitchers have ears (closest variant in ODEP: Small pitchers have wide ears) functioning as an evaluative comment on the topic of conversation. YORK. If 'twere not she, I cannot tell who told me. Q. ELIZ. A parlous boy. Go to, you are too shrewd. 35 ARCH. Good madam, be not angry with the child. Q. ELIZ. Pitchers have ears.

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The occurrence of this proverb as a complete, simple conversational turn is fully in keeping with everyday conversational practice, as observed so far. The famous All the world's a stage in AYLIII vii 139 (ODEP: 918) provides a good example of a proverb used as the statement of a position to be elaborated in a longer speech. DUKE S.

JAQ.

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy. This wide and universal theater Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in. All the world's a stage, 139 And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages ...

Nevertheless, this proverb could also easily have occurred as an independent evaluative comment on the foregoing speech. Again its cohesion with the preceding speech and even with the following sentences of Jaques' own speech is semantic rather than syntactic, depending on the relationships between terms like theater, scene, stage, players etc. Tilley (1950) associates the line For this will out in RICH I iv 290 with the proverb Murder will out (ODEP: 551); in my terminology the proverb serves as a template for the line both syntactically in the form of the verb phrase and semantically in the thought expressed. 2. MUR.

1. MUR.

I would he knew that I had saved his brother! Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say, For I repent me that the Duke is slain. 285 [Exit.] So do not I. Go, coward as thou art. Now must I hide his body in some hole Until the Duke take order for his burial. And when I have my meed, I must away, For this will out, and here I must not stay. 290 [Exit.]

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The First Murderer accepts the message of the proverb as true and concludes from it that he must flee. Presumably the playgoer is expected to understand the conclusion on the basis of his knowledge of the proverbial belief that murder will be revealed. The line derived from the template proverb functions as an evaluative argument in a longer speech, if classified on the basis of the taxonomy developed so far for proper utterances of proverbs. As a second example of Shakespeare's use of proverbs as templates, consider the following passage from LEAR II ii 57-65. OSW. KENT.

CORN. KENT.

I am scarce in breath, my lord. No marvel, you have so bestirred your valor. You cowardly rascal, Nature disclaims in thee. A tailor made thee. Thou art a strange fellow — a tailor make a man? Aye, a tailor, sir. A stonecutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though he had been but two hours at the trade.

57

60

65

Kent first alludes to the proverb The tailor makes the man (ODEP: 797) in line 60. Note that even this allusion retains the evaluative spirit associated with the proverb itself. The allusion is too obscure for Cornwall, who requests clarification. Hence Kent's attempt at explanation. Thus a single proverb serves as a semantic template for five successive lines. Proverbially inspired passages of this type are common in Shakespeare's plays, as a review of the passages identified in Tilley's (1950) Shakespeare Index shows. For more on Shakespeare's use of proverbs, consult the bibliography in Mieder (1978 c) and Dent (1981). A few tentative conclusions are possible. First, Shakespeare uses proverbs as templates more often than as simple evaluative comments. He exploits their status as repositories of traditional wisdom and commonplace beliefs. Second and consequently, proverbs appear in Shakespeare's plays more often as part of longer speeches and less often as complete, independent utterances than in free conversation. They also appear more

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often integrated into longer sentences, sometimes altered to conform to these sentences. Notable is thirdly that proverbs retain their fundamentally evaluative character even in allusions and otherwise alienated forms. Fourth, the tendency away from the proverb as a complete, independent utterance and toward the proverb as (a template for) part of a longer speech increases with the distance between a given type of text and free conversation, so that a novel should contain fewer independent proverbs, except in simulated dialogue, than a play. This hypothesis receives some support from the data on proverbs in the press discussed in the following section.

2.1.3 Proverbs in the press In the International Herald Tribune for Tuesday, April 13,1982: 6 in an editorial entitled "How much is enough?" one finds the passage: And the champions of "humanism" cry enough is enough; they want survival in this world but are unwilling to engage the problems that poses. Those problems are: "How much is enough?" and "Enough for what?" The proverb Enough is enough (ODEP: 244) is here cited as if quoted from the speech of certain people, the so-called "champions of 'humanism'." If they, or at least one of them, actually uttered the proverb, it was presumably as an evaluative comment on the arms race or on someone else's comment on it. In the context given, the proverb functions to characterize a particular attitude on the part of the champions of "humanism." But the author goes on to use the proverb as what I have been calling a template for further sentences, viz. the two questions cited in the following paragraph. One of these questions even appears again as the title of the whole article. According to Mieder (1977, 1978 a) newspaper headlines are often modelled on proverbs and proverbial phrases in order to attract attention and arouse emotional interest in the article below. Se we may view the present example as a typical one.

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23

A second textual use of a proverb appears in the International Herald Tribune from October 12, 1981: 4. ... Revelations by serious scholars had already indicated that not only the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union closed their eyes to the genocide, but many leaders of the American Jewish community deliberately chose to ignore it at the time. Better late than never, the forthcoming survey also has a special relevance to the present ... Better late than never (ODEP: 54) occurs most commonly as an independent evaluative comment on someone's late arrival, perhaps by the late-comer himself as a kind of excuse. But in the present example the proverb serves as the initial clause of a longer sentence; it reveals the writer's attitude toward the appearance of the survey mentioned, and thus remains essentially evaluative in nature. The integration of a proverb into a sentence in this fashion is a drastic exception to the rule that proverbs occur as independent entities; but this use is apparently more common in drama than in conversation and more common still in the press, according to my data (note the examples immediately below). The "People" section of Time (9 February 1981: 43) quotes Gore Vidal, candidate for the senate seat occupied by Samuel F. Hayakawa, as saying It is my policy to let sleeping senators lie with reference to the senator. Here again a proverb Let sleeping dogs lie (ODEP: 456) provided a template for Vidal's let sleeping senators lie; again a proverb, or at least a proverbial allusion, is embedded within a longer sentence, this time functioning to describe a particular attitude or policy; and again the fundamentally evaluative nature of the proverb remains significant. Vidal's statement achieves humor not only through the unexpected replacement of the proverbial dogs by the decidedly unproverbial senators, but also on alluding to Senator Hayakawa's penchant for cat-napping in the senate. In Time for 12 January 1981: 18 an article entitled "Having the cake and eating it too" deals with the maintenance of the work ethic and a high living standard in spite of long vacations, sick leave, abuse of unemployment benefits etc. in West

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Germany. An official of the Ministry of Economics is quoted as saying, "We may be on the verge of having our cake and eating it too." The speaker semantically inverts the proverb You cannot have your cake and eat it, changing its expression of an unfortunate fact of life into a description of a Utopian state of affairs by dropping the negative. Even inverted thus the proverb apparently retains an evaluative quality in the judgment it suggests of the state of affairs at issue. Again the proverb occurs within a longer sentence rather than as an independent unit. The you and your of general reference in the inventorized form of the proverb here disappear in favor of the speaker's particularly referring we (ellipted under coreference with we in the initial clause) and our. As in the previous example, the proverb loses its independent existence and is fully integrated into a larger structure, much as if it were a proverbial phrase. A few tentative conclusions are in order here. First, the examples collected point up the function of proverbs as templates and as integrated parts of larger speeches in contrast to their free occurrence as evaluative comments. This conclusion correlates with Mieder's (1977,1978 a) emphasis on the template function of proverbs in contemporary texts, especially in headlines in the press and in advertisements. Second, this corroborates the hypothesis formulated in the previous section that the tendency to use proverbs as templates as well as in longer speeches increases along with the distance between the containing text and free conversation. Third, and somewhat surprisingly, utterances based on proverbs apparently retain (a portion of) the evaluative force of a proverb, even when they invert or make humorous use of its content.

2.2 How proverbs mean in interactions As noted in § 2.0, my concern here is with general interactional tendencies common to all kinds of proverbs in all kinds of situations, rather than with special functions of individual pro-

2.2 How proverbs mean in interactions

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verbs. Two basic characteristics differentiate proverbs generally from freely formed utterances. First, proverbs are preformed, inventorized linguistic units; and second, they are traditional items of folklore. These characteristics have important consequences for the interactional meanings proverbs realize in contexts. I investigate these consequences in the next two sections.

2.2.1 Proverbs as inventorized units An initial consequence of proverbs being inventorized units consists in their very availability as preformed utterances. By choosing a ready-made utterance with a standard ideational meaning and perhaps a standard textual and/or interactional meaning as well, the speaker avoids the necessity of formulating an original utterance of his own. This can be useful, especially in situations where the speaker feels ill at ease or is unsure of the conventions in force. Further, recurrent situations call for stock formulas, among them proverbs. Generally recognized stock utterances with standard social functions ensure smooth interaction in society (cf. Norrick 1978). So the very fact of a proverb's familiarity and its standard social function affects its interactional meaning. A second consequence of proverbs being inventorized is their value in signalling group membership. In this respect, proverbs are like cliches, jokes, especially inside jokes, allusions, quotes and ways of speaking generally, all of which can lead to bonding between people; cf. Cohen (1978) on the cultivation of intimacy with metaphoric utterances generally. A speaker can signal his membership in and identification with the local village community by drawing on its stock of (dialect) proverbs, as described in Hain (1951). But speakers also signal their identification with national units in citing proverbs like Don't take any wooden nickels or An Englishman's house is his castle or with, say, the group of older people in citing Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to be so or An old Fox is not easily snared. Further, by indicating his understanding and

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appreciation of the proverbial utterance, the hearer also signals his acceptance of and identification with the speaker and the group in question. The fact of proverbs being inventorized also has consequences for their status as speech acts. A speaker who uses a proverb falls back on the traditional store of preformed utterances. Seen this way, utterances of proverbs are acts of quoting. But the speaker does not quote an individual author; he quotes the linguistic community itself. This seems to me not essentially different from quoting the Bible, Shakespeare or any other source felt to be part of the cultural heritage of the community as a whole. Their status as quoted traditional material sets proverbs off from the texts they occur in; it reinforces their apartness from their context, as Abrahams (1968 a: 146) puts it, or foregrounds them, in the terminology of Havränek (1958: 9ff.) and Mukarovsky (1958: 21 ff.). This introduces an additional element to their full, contextual meaning, and allows one to predict that the contextless ideational meaning of a proverb as a text does not exhaust its total semantic contribution to its text and interaction of occurrence. The mere association (psychologically) of a linguistic unit with folklore and traditional wisdom tends to generalize its meaning. All stored collocations, from irreversible binomials to potentially complete utterances like proverbs, tend to develop idiomatic textual/interactional significance. So it is no wonder that even so-called literal proverbs realize more than their simple literal meaning in texts. I stress this point here, so that I may concentrate on ideational meaning — both literal and figurative — in the following chapters: I necessarily abstract away from textual and interactional meaning in identifying SPIs and literal readings for proverbs. But this abstraction is justified in order to get clear about the relations between literal and figurative readings in proverbs, a central concern of the present investigation. Now, if utterances of proverbs mean what they say on the literal level but go on to expand this meaning idiomatically in texts, then they classify as indirect speech acts in the sense of Searle (1975). I can say Praise a fair day at night and mean what I say about praise and days, while at the same time

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conveying to my hearer a general warning which he derives from my utterance. My proverbial utterance tips my hearer off to look for further contextual meaning, to the degree that it fails to contribute relevantly to the text/interaction on its literal level. Grice (1975) calls what is conveyed by an indirect speech act an implicature. Speakers generate implicatures by violating conventions Grice labels conversational maxims, to wit roughly: Be relevant; Be brief; Be accurate; Be clear. Thus utterances of proverbs generate implicatures in texts by violating conversational maxims, which again points up their status as indirect speech acts. Proverbs are therefore doubly indirect. First, they are quoted. As such they express observations not original with the speaker; the speaker need not take full responsibility for their form or content. Second, proverbs generate implicatures. The speaker means what he says on the literal level, but he means something more in context. It is up to the hearer to piece together the intended implicature. Consequently, as in other cases of quoting and indirect speech acts, the speaker can to some degree deny responsibility for the implicatures. In Norrick (1981c) I stressed the importance of proverbs and other nondirect speech acts (including both indirect and figurative speech acts; cf. Ehrich and Saile 1972) in allowing the speaker to disguise his true feelings, to leave himself an escape route, to offer his hearer choices and to indicate real or imagined consensus (cf. Wunderlich 1972: 33). I pointed up the use speakers make of nondirect speech acts, including proverbs, in avoiding double binds, in the everyday sense of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemmas, rather than in the full psychological sense of Bateson et al. (1956). Speakers often resort to proverbs in double bind situations, e.g. when they are called upon for a judgment that might hurt another's feelings or reveal their own private preferences. Research shows that speakers cite proverbs to avoid personal commitment and refutation (cf. Taylor 1962: 169; Arewa and Dundes 1964: 70; and Barley 1972: 740).

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2.2.2 Proverbs as traditional items of folklore As noted in the preceding section, in uttering a proverb a speaker quotes a traditional item of the folklore of the community. As items quoted from this stock, proverbs carry the force of timetested wisdom, and the speaker can draw on this authority. This correlates strongly with the observation in § 2.1.1.2 that proverbs most commonly have evaluative function and a didactic tone in free conversation. Essentially the same effect can be achieved by citing scripture, famous authors or recognized authorities in the relevant field. In each case the speaker adds authority and credibility to his utterance by identifying himself with traditional wisdom, beliefs and prejudices of the community at large; cf. Quasthoff (1978) on 'common knowledge'. One consequence of this can be seen in patterns of proverb usage. Younger speakers use fewer proverbs than older ones; and speakers generally tend to cite proverbs when speaking (authoritatively) to and for the benefit of hearers younger than themselves (cf. Hain 1951). Of course, younger speakers may make humorous use of proverbs for just this reason. A second consequence of the traditional character of proverbs appears in the reactions they call forth. Hearers tend to react to proverb utterances as they would to directives from authoritative sources. The weight of traditional or majority opinion inculcates utterances of proverbs with authority. A simple statement of fact or belief like An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure seems to bear a directive force equal to that of a true imperative like Look before you leap; in the right context Speech is silvern, silence is golden can express the same interactional meaning as Please be quiet. This observation leads to the didactic character of proverbs generally. Apparently we become so accustomed to hearing proverbs cited as evaluative rules of behavior that literally quite neutral proverbs take on a didactic flavor. For instance, although tests have shown that A rolling stone gathers no moss can mean either 'a person on the move stays young' or 'a person on the move stays poor', hearers interpret it interactionally to mean either that they should or should not 'roll', depending on their beliefs (cf. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1973).

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29

This tendency in proverbs has often led to their definition as necessarily didactic in nature (e.g. Seiler 1922). But also those writers who insist on describing the meanings of proverbs in concrete social situations (e.g. Firth 1926: 150; Hain 1951: 56 ff.; Arewa and Dundes 1964) have recognized the importance of the didactic moment in the interactional meaning of proverbs. And indeed we noted the characteristic evaluative function and didactic tone of proverbs in free conversation in § 2.1.1.2. This authoritative, didactic character of proverbs may initially seem to be at loggerheads with the noncommittal nature discussed above: how can uttering a proverb carry authoritative directive force and get the speaker off the hook at the same time? I think the answer should already be apparent. By invoking tradition and the community as a whole, the speaker not only disappears as an individual directive agent, he also imposes the weight of social sanctions. So the traditional character of proverbs imbues their ideational meanings with authority and lends their directive interactional meanings force, while allowing the speaker himself to fade into general community opinion. Finally, due to their didactic, authoritative character, proverbs tend to place the speaker in a one-up position vis-a-vis his hearer. In citing a proverb, the speaker signals as interactional meaning that he wants to or at least is willing to assume the role of teacher/advisor for his hearer. If some speaker regularly cites proverbs to some hearer, one naturally assumes that he feels responsible for or one-up in relation to the hearer. One would hardly expect a child to utter proverbs to his parents or teachers with any frequency. So a speaker shows with a proverbial utterance that he has the right, or at least can afford to act as if he had the right, to council his hearer, and thereby that the relationship is either one between equals or one in which the speaker is one-up. Again this consequence of the traditional character of proverbs may appear to fly in the face of my observation from above that they lead to bonding between the speaker and hearer, but the two need not contradict each other. A one-up person can offer his advice as a way of establishing a bond with a person who is one-down with respect to him, i. e. he can enter into a parent-child or a teacher-student relation with the latter.

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And this relationship corresponds to the didactic moment of interactional meaning in proverbs discussed above.

2.3 Summary To summarize this chapter as a whole, I have discussed how proverbs mean in texts and interactions in order to prepare for and round out the picture of proverb meaning presented in the remainder of this study, a picture oriented toward ideational meaning in proverbs as texts. Some of the conclusions drawn in this chapter have consequences for the linguistic definition of the proverb to be developed in the following chapter. These are: (1) Proverbs are fundamentally conversational; (2) Proverbs occur most characteristically as complete conversational turns syntactically independent of their context; (3) Proverbs are semantically general and evaluative; (4) Proverbs function as evaluative comments with authoritative, didactic force. Other conclusions drawn above have consequences for the method of analysis employed in the following. These are: (1) Proverbs are preformed, inventorized traditional items of folklore, which means (2) that they realize textual and interactional meanings in context beyond what is predictable on the basis of their ideational content alone. (3) Consequently, in order to accurately describe the ideational meaning of proverbs as texts, one must abstract away from their textual and interactional significance.

Chapter 3 Defining the proverb

3.0 Introduction This chapter begins with a critical review of research on the definition of the proverb. The review includes sections on traditional and structural definitions, before distinguishing supercultural from ethnographic definitions and discussing definition via feature matrix. Since proverb definitions involve syntactic, semantic and pragmatic considerations, this chapter provides a general introduction to the state of the art in proverb research as a whole. Finally, on the basis of the critical review, a linguistic definition of the proverb will be proposed.

3.1 Traditional proverb definitions Through the years scholars have repeatedly identified certain defining characteristics of proverbs. Proverbs are consistently described as self-contained, pithy, traditional expressions with didactic content and fixed, poetic form 3 . We will investigate these 3. I use the everyday, rather more folkloristic than linguistic terms of the literature I am reviewing here: self-contained, pithy, traditional etc., and stick with them in the following chapters to the extent that they can meaningfully be assigned expedious linguistic definitions.

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characteristics in turn, attempt to assign each an interpretation in linguistic terms, point out ambiguities and problems, and test them against the ODEP corpus.

3.1.1 Proverbs are self-contained According to Seiler (1922: 2) proverbs must be self-contained sayings (in sich geschlossene Sprüche), by which he means that none of their essential grammatical units may be replaced. Seiler introduces this definitional criterion solely to distinguish proverbs from proverbial phrases. Proverbial phrases like To face the music and Brown as a berry are immediately excluded from the class of proverbs, because they lack precisely essential grammatical units, which can thus be substituted into them at will. Other writers on proverbs have generally agreed with Seiler both in insisting that the proverb be self-contained and in viewing self-containedness as the property differentiating proverbs from proverbial phrases, although they express the property itself differently. Recall too the data presented in §2.1.1.2, which indicated that proverbs most usually occur as free evaluative comments syntactically independent of their context in free conversation.

3.1.1.1 Proverbs as (propositional) statements For instance, Milner (1969 a) and Barley (1972) intend something quite close to Seller's self-containedness when they identify proverbs with statements. Abrahams (1972) is perhaps more precise in requiring the proverb to be a full statement; Dundes (1975: 970) proposes the even more precise propositional statement. This proposal requires critical comment. First, I take Abrahams and Dundes to mean the proverb must express at least one logical proposition, i.e. a unit analyzable as a predicate and one or more arguments. An initial objection to the notion of the logical proposition as a definitional criterion is that it fails to correspond to natural conversational

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conventions, which have little in common with formal logical conventions (cf. Abercrombie 1965: 6ff.; Crystal and Davy 1969: 102 ff.). Second, all five writers cited so far apparently intend their criteria to apply to some deeper, semantic level underlying the surface structure of proverbs, since proverb surface structures routinely consist of pure predicates without arguments, e.g. Forewarned, forearmed; Soon gotten, soon spent; Live and let live. But appeal to deep structure presupposes a complete semantic analysis preceding determination of proverb status, a reversal of the normal order of operations. The appeal to deep structure further presupposes a theory of proverb deep structure and methods for determining it. Failing such a theory and methods, the notion of the logical proposition provides no testable criterion. Third, even presupposing deep structure semantic analyses for proverbs in question, the logical proposition can only serve as a lower boundary on proverb form, and not as coextensive with the proverb, since proverbs commonly contain more than a single propositional unit. Examples are Marry in haste and repent at leisure; As a man lives, so shall he die, as a tree falls, so shall it lie; Fair and sluttish, black and proud, long and lazy, little and loud. As the data from Hain (1951) reviewed in § 2.1.1.2 suggest, some notion based on the structure of conversation seems most appropriate for defining the proverb, say that of the complete conversational turn syntactically independent of the surrounding text.

3.1.1.2 Proverbs as (grammatical) sentences Other paremiologists have had recourse to the syntactic notion of the sentence. Taylor (1934) determines that proverbs must be complete (if elliptical) sentences, and goes on to insist in Taylor (1939) that they be grammatical sentences. Such writers as Abrahams (1968 a), Holbek (1970: 54) and Röhrich and Mieder (1977: 2 — 3) also accept (complete) sentence status as a definitional property of the proverb.

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proverb

It seems initially plausible that all proverbs take the form of complete grammatical sentences; and we should prefer the term sentence to either proposition, statement or self-contained saying, inasmuch as it is independently defined in linguistic theories. Unfortunately the grammatical notion of the sentence suffers from many of the same problems we have just seen the statement or the proposition to suffer from. It ignores the fundamentally conversational nature of the proverb; it is untestable due to its appeal to the unoperationalized notion of deep structure; it is not coextensive with the proverb, but provides only a lower boundary on its form. In addition, the notion of the grammatical sentence has some shortcomings of its own. First, many proverbs exhibit special recurrent proverbial structures (formulas in the terminology of Neumann 1966; cf. Kuusi 1966) which no normal grammar would generate as complete grammatical sentences. Witness for instance: Like father, like son; Better late than never; Forewarned, forearmed; No rose without a thorn and many others. A grammar which described strings like these as complete grammatical sentences would necessarily also generate countless structures unacceptable to all speakers. We return to the treatment of such ungrammatical proverbs and proverb formulas in the following chapter. Second, there are proverbs which conform neither to the rules of grammar nor to special proverb formulas like those just mentioned. The ODEP provides numerous cases in point in the form of archaic and dialect proverbs, e. g. All that shakes falls not; Who will sell the cow must say the word; All love lies α-bleeding; Hungry flies bite sore; Honour a physician before thou hast need of him. Again we cannot expect the grammar of contemporary English to generate these strings; it makes no sense to speak of these structures as complete grammatical sentences. In addition, the sentence itself can be defined only within the framework of some particular grammar. Fries (1952: 9 — 26) demonstrated the inadequacy of traditional grammatical definitions of the sentence. More recent definitions of the sentence are just as unable to handle structures such as The more, the merrier; Like father, like son and Forewarned, forearmed without

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significant modifications. Fries' own definition of the sentence has recourse to the notion of the potential (initial) conversational turn, a notion which jibes with that of the complete conversational turn syntactically independent of the surrounding text, as developed in §2.1.1.2 on the basis of data from Hain (1951). I return to these notions in my own linguistic definition of the proverb in § 3.5.1.1 below. For present purposes it suffices to note that the syntactic notion of the (grammatical) sentence is overly restrictive as a definitional criterion for the proverb. The definition of proverbs as self-contained statements or something similar distinguishes them from proverbial phrases (cf. Seiler 1922: 11 ff.; Taylor 1962: 184 ff.; Röhrich 1973: 9 ff.), because the latter are sentence constituents, either nominal, verbal, adjectival or prepositional phrases such as Kit and caboodle, To kick over the traces, Mad as a hatter and Up the creek respectively, which cannot constitute a free utterance under normal circumstances. But their self-contained character also distinguishes proverbs proper from cliches containing indexical expressions which require concrete references in the immediate context. Examples from the F-Corpus of the ODEP are: If I were to fast for my life, I would take a good breakfast and You will as soon get a fart out of a dead man with the deictic pronouns / and you in their surface structures, Farewell and be hanged with implicit reference to the hearer due to its imperative form, Farewell, fieldfare, which establishes reference to the hearer by addressing him metaphorically as fieldfare, and He would faint at the the smell of a wallflower with the pronoun he which must be referred to someone identified in its context of occurrence. With the possible exception of the first example, all these cliches disqualify as proverbs because they lack the evaluative, didactic meaning proverbs typically express (see §3.1.4 below). But their particular reference further disqualifies them as proverbs, because it implies a lack of generality (see §3.5.1.1 (7) on generality as a defining characteristic of proverbs). Sayings whose referring expressions are interpreted generally rather than particularly still classify as proverbs. The imperative Strike while the iron is hot counts as a proverb because it is standardly interpreted as 'one should act while propitious

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3 Defining the proverb

circumstances obtain' rather than with reference to the hearer as such; this will be true of generalizable sayings in the imperative mood as a group.

3.1.2 Proverbs are pithy Proverbs have been repeatedly characterized as pithy or pregnant in meaning. Seiler (1922: 4), Firth (1926: 134-35), Hain (1963: 44) and Röhrich and Mieder (1977: 3) among others all concur on this point. But none of these authors provides any insight into just what pithiness or pregnancy of meaning entails. First, pithiness is clearly a relative notion. No communicative unit can be absolutely pithy, but only relative to some other unit. But we are not told whether proverbs are pithy with respect to other linguistic units generally, to other linguistic units of comparable length or to other items of folklore (of comparable length). If we equate pithiness with a high degree of (lexical) meaning per word in a construction, then it becomes predictable of many elliptical proverbs simply on the basis that they lack semantically neutral and purely function words. Compare e. g. The more, the merrier with The more people there are, the merrier they are or Forewarned, forearmed with He who is forewarned will be forearmed. Since the latter construction is essentially a paraphrase of the proverb in both cases, the elliptical proverbs necessarily express more meaning per word. But if pithiness in proverbs is predictable given their tendency to ellipsis, then we need not consider it a separate defining characteristic. This result raises two further questions. First, are elliptical proverbs pithier than similarly elliptical constructions generally? Second, are unelliptical proverbs also pithy? Regarding the first question, if pithiness simply amounts to much meaning per word in a construction, then any structure we model on a proverb should be just as pithy as its original. The warmer, the cosier must equal in pithiness its model The more, the merrier. The same holds for Slandered, ruined and its model Forewarned, forearmed. In order to maintain pithiness as a defining characteristic of proverbs, we must interpret it in some other

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manner. This leads us to look at unelliptical proverbs and hence to the second question just posed. Some unelliptical proverbs my informants labeled pithy are Money answers all things, Love is blind and All geese are swans. In addition to being short and containing no superfluous words, these proverbs are figurative. They cannot be assigned consistent interpretations as standard compositional structures. A detailed analysis of figures in proverbs must wait until chapter 5; for present purposes we need only note that figurative constructions express multiple simultaneous meanings. This property counts as pithiness, if we equate it with a high number of meanings per construction, irrespective of word count. Money answers all things must then be pithy because one can interpret it as a personification of money with a literal reading for answer or as a metaphorical extension of answer with a literal reading for money. Love is blind exhibits parallel dual interpretation. All geese are swans has a literal, paradoxical interpretation, and at least one consistent interpretation on which the geese think they are swans; I return to interpretations for paradoxical proverbs in § 5.6. But again if proverbs are pithy simply because they tend to be figurative, then pithiness should not be treated as a defining property in its own right. We must still inquire whether unelliptical, literal proverbs are pithy. Consider such examples as Children should be seen and not heard, Do as I say, not as I do and The exception proves the rule. My informants were not disposed to call these and similar proverbs pithy. This leaves only shortness itself as a criterion for pithiness. Since the shortest proverbs possible in English are two words long (cf. Dundes 1975: 965), e. g. Time flies and Money talks, we can equate shortness in proverbs with a word count of two or close to it. But notice that shortness cannot provide a sufficient condition for pithiness, inasmuch as short sentences like Al's here and Joe left do not count as pithy: even if they might be considered pithy remarks in special contexts, they are not pithy on the basis of their form alone. On the other hand, something like shortness does seem to be a necessary condition for pithiness. No one considers Al is currently present at this location pithy; and of course by comparison to this sentence, Al's here does

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proverb

rate as pithy. So while shortness alone does not provide a sufficient condition for pithiness, it appears to provide a necessary one. In addition, relative shortness correlates with increased pithiness. Perhaps then shortness provides a sufficient condition for pithiness when coupled with proverb status. Thus, while Don't hurry does not count as pithy, Haste makes waste, in combining proverb status with shortness, does. But we must be careful here, since short proverbs are very often either elliptical, figurative or both. Haste makes waste, for instance, tends to be interpreted as a personification or animation of haste and a concretization of waste (a full description of these types of semantic interpretation is given in § 5.3). My informants also considered Live and learn and Enough is enough pithy. But notice that Live and learn, potentially analyzable as a complete imperative sentence, can be naturally viewed as an elliptical version of something like Live and then you will learn or If you live, you must learn. Further, while Enough is enough is neither elliptical nor figurative in the narrow sense, it is tautological, which leads to its having multiple simultaneous interpretations like those in paradoxical proverbs; see § 5.6. Even Know thyself, which may be viewed as pithy in spite of being unelliptical and literal, may cause difficulties due to its archaic form. Ultimately the ODEP corpus appears to contain no proverbs which are clearly neither elliptical, figurative (including hyperbolic, paradoxical and tautological), archaic nor dialectal, and nevertheless judged pithy. We can draw the following conclusions. Pithiness entails relative shortness. Elliptical and figurative proverbs can be redundantly characterized as pithy. The combination of shortness and proverb status may be a sufficient condition for pithiness. Since we have seen examples of (literal, unelliptical) proverbs not judged pithy, pithiness cannot serve as a defining criterion in any case. Of course, if only figurative proverbs are classified as true proverbs, as some authors have proposed (see § 3.1.6.2), then pithiness vacuously becomes a defining property by implication. Except for the facts that the relative shortness of proverbs follows from their classification as propositional statements and that they are often elliptical and/or figurative,

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no mention will be made of the property of pithiness in the linguistic definition of the proverb proposed below.

3.1.3 Proverbs are traditional The traditional nature of proverbs correlates closely with their status as items of folklore, and I propose to treat both notions together in this section. The correlation between traditionality and folklore status comes out clearly in Abrahams' (1969: 106) definition of folklore as "traditional items of knowledge which arise in recurring performances." Since folklore is traditional and recurring, it is viewed as authorless, sourceless and also as non-literary, non-learned. Further, inasmuch as proverbs are linguistic items, the recurring performances in question must be verbal (even if they are later recorded in writing). Firth (1926: 134 — 35) cites the rustic nature of proverbs as items of folklore in his definition, but he also stresses their common use, viz. in recurring verbal performances (1926: 265 — 66). Seller's (1922: 2 ff.) term Volkläufigkeit encompasses not only the classification of proverbs as items of folklore, but also their common use as well. More recent definitions have stuck with the term traditional to the exclusion of, but perhaps presupposing, the phrase items of folklore as such, e. g. Taylor (1950: 902), Röhrich (1967: 51), Holbek (1970: 54), Abrahams (1968 a: 150) and (1972: 119), Milner (1969 a: 199), Dundes (1975: 962) and so on. Jolles (1930: 151 — 54) criticizes the notion folk (Volk) as Seiler (1922) employs it. Seiler vacillates in applying the name folk to the population as a whole, to groups in particular regions, to ethnic groups, social groups and to social classes. Jolles suggests dispensing with the notion of folk altogether and prefers to speak in terms of social classes and professional groups. But I think we can do better than this today, given advances in linguistics. First, inasmuch as proverbs are linguistic units, they can be identified with some linguistic community. Second, to the extent that proverbs contain dialectal, sociolectal etc. features (together

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3 Defining the proverb

simply lectal features), they can be further associated with specific groups within the linguistic community as a whole. Then these groups can also be broken down along parameters of age, profession, sex etc. So we might reinterpret Seller's Volkläufigkeit to mean 'in traditional and/or common use in a linguistic community at large or within one of its lectal groups'; here traditional use reduces to 'long term common usage'. I return to this interpretation below in the linguistic definition of the proverb, also proposing a test to determine when it applies. The foregoing reveals ambiguity in the term traditional as it appears in characterizations of proverbs. On the one hand, proverbs in general are traditional by virtue of their being items of folklore. In this sense, as we have just seen, traditionality amounts to common use in a linguistic community or in one of its lectal groups over a period of time, say more than one generation. On the other hand, any given proverb may be considered traditional or not on the basis of its content, especially if it is cast in rustic imagery, i. e. if it describes a preIndustrial Revolution scene, and/or contains archaisms. Time is money goes back at least as far as the ancient Greek Theophrastus (c. 372—187 B. C.) and is attested for English as early as 1659 (ODEP: 538), so that it clearly counts as traditional in the former sense of common use over time. Yet it hides its age well. One finds nothing archaic in its wording or imagery. By contrast, proverbs like Strike while the iron is hot, Soft fire makes sweet malt and The horse next the mill carries all the grist trade on rustic images which give them a traditional ring, whether they have been in use over time or not. The same holds of proverbs with truly archaic constructions or lexis, e.g. Hackney mistress, hackney maid; Make not thy friend thy foe; All love lies α-bleeding. In the following, traditional will be used only in the first sense, i.e. to mean 'in common use over a period of time'. Proverbs which evoke a 'traditional' atmosphere through rustic imagery and/or archaic language will be described in just such terms. To briefly summarize this section: I have defined and related the notions of folklore and traditionality; and I have narrowed the latter for the purposes of the present study.

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3.1.4 Proverbs have didactic content Didactic content in one form or another has consistently been predicated of proverbs by paremiologists of various persuasions. Recall comments on the evaluative function and didactic tone of proverbs in conversation in § 2.1.1.2 and § 2.2.2. Seiler (1922: 2—4) makes didactic tendency a definitional criterion of the proverb. He identifies didactic tendency with relevance for knowledge of and behavior in human life. The didactic tendency may be direct in the form of a prescriptive rule or warning as in e. g. Live and let live; Look before you leap; Make hay while the sun shines; Never say die as well as indirect in the form of an observation or statement about experience as in e. g. Nothing venture, nothing gain; Soon gotten, soon spent; The early bird catches the worm; Harvest follows seed time. In a similar vein, Firth (1926: 265 — 66) requires of proverbs that they express an injunction in social behavior or transmit the facts of experience; and Taylor (1950: 902) defines proverbs as didactic, explaining that they suggest a course of action or contain a statement of fact. Abrahams' (1968 a: 150) definition of proverbs as traditional answers to recurrent ethical problems fits well with Seller's indirect didactic tendency and with Firth's injunction in social behavior. In defining proverbs as standard statements of moral or categorical imperatives, Barley (1972: 741) comes down on the side of the direct didactic tendency of proverbs. By contrast, Milner (1969 a: 199) claims proverbs are based on experience or observation, and thereby stresses the indirect, experiential side of their didactic nature. Jolles (1930:158 — 59) objects to considering proverbs didactic at all, but he attacks only the first mentioned direct, prescriptive didactic tendency. Jolles himself champions the empirical interpretation of proverb content, what we have been calling their indirect, experiential didactic content. He insists strenuously that proverb content is directed toward past experience rather than to future behavior, but he confounds in his conviction three separable factors: (1) neutral, ideational meaning; (2) reason for use (Illocutionary point for Searle 1969); and (3) effect on the hearer (Perlocutionary act for Austin 1962).

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Thus one might well agree with Jolles that proverb content as such reports experiences rather than issuing commands (but cf. the examples of the direct didactic tendency cited above) without wanting to or logically having to deny that speakers use proverbs to direct and convice hearers or that hearers interpret (even non-didactically intended) proverbs as prescriptive moral rules or as directive warnings. Whether the speaker views The early bird catches the worm, No sweet without sour and Better be sure than sorry as summations of past experience or not, he can cite them as warnings and the hearer can understand and obey them as such in any case. Especially Hain (1963) stresses the importance of looking at a proverb's contextual functions in addition to or instead of its internal semantic structure in order to assess its didactic character; but even Firth (1926: 134) emphasizes the importance of meaning in the social situation, i. e. meaning as social function. Most problematic are proverbs used conventionally-idiomatically in a particular situation (cf. §2.1.1.2 and Taylor 1962: 129 ff. on conventional phrases). While the proverb Fingers were made before forks clearly expresses a truth worth knowing and even worth drawing conclusions for action from, when a speaker uses it in the usual way he is simply availing himself of a ready-made excuse for eating with the fingers. And Little pitchers have wide ears is customarily cited simply to warn of children listening with no didactic function, despite its potential as an evaluative-didactic comment in other situations. These and similar proverbs do not function didactically when conventionally applied, but they still exhibit an evaluative meaning which can take on a didactic tone under certain circumstances. So it seems correct to distinguish them as proverbs from simple situationally bound cliches like The fat is in the fire to indicate impending danger or Your father was no glazier to ask someone blocking out the light to move. These last two sayings, both from the F-Corpus, are figurative but lack the evaluative meaning necessary for at least potential didactic use. By way of conclusion then, many proverbs exhibit either direct or indirect didactic tendency. Whether any proverb or any other single utterance is didactic on the basis of its semantic content alone seems to be a moot point; but clearly all proverbs

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should be usable as directly didactic in some context. Even more or less situationally bound proverbs must have an evaluative meaning (qua SPI rather than literal reading) which enables them to function didactically under certain circumstances. Sayings lacking didactic potential entirely are cliches rather than proverbs.

3.1.5 Proverbs have fixed form Taylor (1950: 902) explicitly mentions "fixed traditional form" as a defining characteristic of proverb; and in Taylor (1962: 135) he calls "rigidity of form ... an essential characteristic of proverbs." Barley (1972: 741) also invokes the notion of fixed form in his definition, although he goes on to include in this notion potential "limited restructuring and variation." Röhrich (1973: 9) calls the proverb a complete sentence in fixed and unchangeable form (abgeschlossener Satz in fester und unveränderlicher Formulierung). Green (1975: 227) agrees in labeling proverbs "fixed expressions." Dundes (1964) distinguishes fixed-phrase genres of folklore such as proverbs and songs, on the one hand, from free-phrase genres such as jokes and folktales, on the other hand. Barley (1974 a: 881) takes over Dundes' distinction in his feature classification of traditional items of folklore. The proverb shares the property of fixed form with the proverbial phrase, while this property differentiates it from the riddle, among other folk genres. Fixedness of form in proverbs, as in all idiomatic units of language, follows from the necessity that they be recognizable as such to members of the linguistic community. The speaker uses a proverb under the assumption that it is familiar as a unit to his hearer. The hearer can assign the correct, i. e. idiomatic, interpretation to the proverb only if he recognizes it as a unit. If the hearer fails to recognize the proverb as such, either because it comes from some other linguistic community or because it has been distorted, he will treat it as a freely formed structure with a standard compositional semantic interpretation.

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3 Defining the proverb

Nevertheless, the condition of recognizability does not require total immutability of proverb form. Hearers continue to recognize a proverb in spite of lexical and/or grammatical variation, especially if the proverb is well known to them. Seiler (1922: 7) stresses that fixedness cannot preclude variability through time. This variability can lead to the simultaneous existence of variants for a 'single' proverb in some cases. Such variants are amply attested to in the ODEP, e. g. Where (When, As) one door shuts (is shut), another opens (is opened); All is not gold that glitters (glisters), All that glisters is not gold and No (Never) pleasure without pain (repentence) among many others. Presumably data of this type led Barley (1972:741), as noted above, to allow within his notion of fixedness "limited restructuring and variation." In the following, fixedness will be understood in Barley's relative sense, while frozenness takes on the sense of 'allowing no alterations in either syntax or lexis'. In Norrick (1981 a) I identified various sources of proverb variation; taken together they make it practically impossible for any proverb to be completely frozen. First, as noted by Seiler (1922: 7) and demonstrated for English by the ODEP, potentially frozen proverbs may exist in multiple variants. In concrete cases it may well be impossible to say whether a speaker has uttered a stored variant or a nonce restructuring of a given proverb. Second and perhaps related to the first point, especially short proverbs in telegraphic style seem always to allow expansion. For instance, Young sinner, old saint and similar proverbs can be expanded as A young sinner, an old saint, A young sinner will be (becomes) an old saint etc. without loss of proverb status or recognizability. Third, proverb frames — I follow Taylor's (1930) discussion of proverb formulas, but prefer the term frame in deference to Kuusi's (1966) terminological suggestions for the sake of consistency — such as One should, You should and Always can be added to many proverbs, in particular those not introduced by noun phrases, to yield accepted proverb variants or acceptable, recognizable proverb-like structures. From Live and let live, Look before you leap and Strike while the iron is hot, for instance, we can derive with the frames mentioned such proverbial

3.ί

Traditional proverb definitions

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sounding structures as: One should live and let live, You should look before you leap and Always strike while the iron is hot etc. Fourth, certain structural changes and lexical additions, especially when accompanied by contrastive stress as in conversational expansions or repetitions for purposes of clarification, do not affect the recognizability of proverbs. Under appropriate circumstances It's being forewarned that makes you forearmed and What little pitchers have is wide ears can be uttered as proverbs, just as their anthologized forms Forewarned, forearmed and Little pitchers have wide ears can. Fifth, special adjectivals like proverbial, everlovin' and (good) ol' can be inserted before any stressed noun phrase in a proverb without disturbing its recognizability. In fact, as we shall see just below, these terms help hearers recognize proverbs as such. In Norrick (1981 a) I dubbed these adjectivals proverbial infixes. In contrast to proverbial affixes like as they say, it is said etc., which precede, follow or interrupt a proverb (cf. Norrick 1981 a: 12 ff.), proverbial infixes occur only within a proverb and do not interrupt its flow. As examples consider: The proverbial pen is mightier than the sword; Make hay while the everlovin' sun shines; The good ol' truth is always green. So the insertion of proverbial infixes holds out the possibility of varying any proverb containing a stressed noun phrase. Sixth and perhaps most importantly, for well known proverbs, mention of one crucial recognizable phrase serves to call forth the entire proverb. Let us designate this minimal recognizable unit as the kernel of the proverb. Hain (1951: esp. 58) shows that for common proverbs the first half or the bare two or three word kernel suffices for a complete conversational turn. Proverbs bear much greater social, philosophical and psychological significance for speakers than do other idiomatic units. They are "strongly coded" (Meleuc 1972: 281) and "overcoded" in Eco's (1972; 1976) terms. Consequently a speaker can call forth a particular proverb for his hearer with a brief allusion to its kernel. This makes it difficult to disfigure a proverb beyond recognizability by normal means at all. Since recognition of a kernel calls forth the whole proverb, certainly a proverb remains recognizable despite radical structural deformation. Strike while the iron is hot retains its

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3 Defining the proverb

idiomatic, metaphoric meaning even if recast in declarative form with insertion of should, passivized and clefted: it is while the iron is hot that it should be struck. Further, the kernels the early bird, rolling stone and stitch in time serve alone to identify the proverbs The early bird catches the worm, A rolling stone gathers no moss and A stitch in time saves nine respectively. So a speaker might warn his hearer against arriving somewhere too late simply by saying: Remember the early bird. Considerations of this kind indicate the importance of the notion of the kernel of a proverb, but they also underscore the variability of proverbs. We have noted different sources of variability in proverbs. The condition of recognizability does not require total frozenness of proverbs; it only limits their variability. But given recognizability on the basis of the kernel alone, familiar proverbs may exhibit quite a wide range of variation. So fixedness in proverbs is only relative, allowing for simultaneous standard variants and some structural and lexical alteration in the standard, stored forms. Proverbs are never completely frozen.

3.1.6 Proverbs have poetic features4 Seiler (1922: 4) explicitly distinguishes external poetic features such as rhythm, parallelism, alliteration etc. and internal features such as metaphor, personification etc. The two are often differentiated implicitly as prosody versus figuration respectively. I shall treat these two types of poetic features, using the latter set of terms, in separate subsections. 3.1.6.1 Prosody in proverbs Prosody, poetic features or devices are repeatedly mentioned in descriptions of proverbs, e.g. by Hain (1963: 44), Abrahams (1968 a: 149), Henke (1968: 196), Holbek (1970: 54). Other authors have listed and described the various prosodic features 4. The terms poetic, poetic features und poetic form are used here in their pretheoretical, non-linguistic senses, as the other terms so far have been: cf. the preceding note.

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of proverbs individually. Taylor (1962: 135 ff.) discusses metric patterns, alliteration and parallelism at some length, in addition to mentioning other typical stylistic features of proverbs. Milner (1969 a: 199) explicitly mentions rhyme, rhythm, repetition and alliteration as common features. All these writers appear to agree with Seiler (1922) in considering prosody a familiar attribute rather than a true defining property of the proverb. Nevertheless, along with figuration and notable language generally, prosody helps render a statement more memorable and thereby increases its chances of becoming inventorized as a unit in a language. This explains why so many proverbs do exhibit prosodic features, figures or both. But it does not entail that all proverbs must exhibit standard prosodic structures. Again referring to our ODEP corpus, we find plenty of everyday prosaic phrases which have nevertheless somehow managed to achieve proverbial status. Witness as examples: Time is money, Every man has his price, Children should be seen and not heard among many others. So the relationship between proverb status and prosody cannot be an essential one. As Cooper and Ross (1975) have shown, a whole series of phonological factors influence the fixedness of word groups, and with it the likelihood of their becoming inventorized as units in a language. Moreover, many of the factors Cooper and Ross found to be important are not included under the heading of prosody on any usual definition. They determine, for instance, (1) that word initial consonant clusters are more likely in the first than in the second half of a unit, (2) that word final long or diphthong vowel nuclei are more likely in the second than in the first half, and (3) that words with higher syllable count are more likely in the second than in the first half. But Cooper and Ross do not attempt to correlate such factors with traditional prosodic features such as rhythm, alliteration and parallelism. There are at present no founded hypotheses about the relative importance of such factors as length of consonant clusters and vowel nuclei, on the one hand, versus rhythm, alliteration, parallelism etc., on the other hand. Nor has any work been done on the relative weights of the different prosodic features themselves in promoting memorability or fixedness, as far as I know.

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3 Defining the

proverb

Further speculation about the effects of prosody and other phonetic factors on fixedness of proverb form goes beyond the scope of this study, inasmuch as its primary concern is proverb semantics. Still it is worth noting that Cooper and Ross (1975) show the order of semantic units to count more than that of phonetic units in any case. A statement which names a single object before it names a plurality of objects, e. g. One foot is better than two crutches, which names the present before the future, e.g. Here today, gone tomorrow or which names something close before it names something far, e. g. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (also illustrates the single-plural dichotomy), stands a better chance of becoming proverbial than a statement with the opposite order, apparently irrespective of the phonetic order in either. And conversely, a statement with the wrong semantic order is not favored, even if it exhibits all the correct phonetic properties. All in all neither phonetic nor semantic characteristics alone can explain why one statement becomes proverbial while another does not. That prosody helps is undisputed. But its role relative to other phonetic properties and to semantic factors has not been studied. On the basis of our corpus we can, however, say that prosody is common in proverbs, but by no means necessary.

3J.6.2 Figuration in proverbs The association of proverbs with figurative meaning goes back at least as far as Aristotle {Rhetoric III, xi, 14), who mentions proverbs as examples of metaphors. But Aristotle does not indicate whether he considers proverbs by definition metaphorical or simply commonly so, and this issue has divided scholars ever since. Except when reporting the views of other writers, I use figurative to mean 'non-literal' and metaphorical for one special case of figuration; see chapter 5 for details. On the one hand, paremiologists like Seiler (1922: 7), Taylor (1950: 902), Hain (1963: 44) and Henke (1968: 196) view metaphoric meaning as an attribute common to proverbs, at least to some types of proverbs, but not as a defining property of the genre itself. Taylor (1962: 5ff.) distinguishes proverbial

3.1 Traditional

proverb definitions

49

apothegms, which are literal, from metaphorical proverbs, but he clearly identifies both as sub-groups within the general class of proverbs. On the other hand, many writers have explicitly banned all literal statements from the class of proverbs proper, preferring traditional saying as the term covering both literal and figurative items. Barley (1972: 741 and 1974 a: 881) differentiates literal traditional sayings from proverbs by terming the former maxims·, Greimas (1970: 309 ff.) draws a parallel distinction between the figurative proverbe and the literal dicton. Green (1975: 227) prefers the term cliche for literal traditional sayings, and Gülich (1978) uses the corresponding Gemeinplatz in the same way. I stick with literal saying as a general term, and use literal proverb as well for reasons I go into immediately below. As Seiler (1922: 7) notes, the distinction between figurative and literal sayings is, first of all, a matter of degree rather than an absolute dichotomy. Seiler points to examples of a kind which will be treated in greater detail in chapter 5, viz. proverbs with metaphorical subject noun phrases and literal predicates such as Pride feels no pain as well as proverbs with the converse combination of metaphorical predicates and literal subject predicates such as Friends are thieves of time. He argues, in my opinion correctly, that these proverbs are metaphoric to a different degree than those which describe an entire metaphorical scene, e. g. Soft fire makes sweet malt, A rolling stone gathers no moss. Now if sayings are metaphoric to different degrees, then the distinction between proverbs and literal sayings is a gradual one rather than one of type, so that a single term seems more appropriate. A second reason for rejecting a dichotomy of proverb versus literal saying based on a dichotomy of figurative versus literal appears in the existence of sayings which may function either literally or figuratively depending on their contexts. One can say Praise a fair day at night both to someone who has begun to praise a day at lunch time or to someone who praises a vacation spot immediately after arriving. It never rains but it pours may be uttered with reference to an actual rain storm or to a person experiencing a series of troubles. Such examples, and these could easily be multiplied, make it difficult to maintain

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3 Defining the proverb

a distinction between literal sayings and figurative proverbs. In many cases we can meaningfully speak only of literal and figurative usages, not of literal and figurative sayings as such. One can not avoid the problem by requiring of proverbs that they be potential figurative utterances either, because even normally literal sayings can take on figurative meaning in certain contexts. A speaker might use Like father, like son of an inventor and his invention; and III gotten, ill spent could be uttered with reference to a person's job or reputation rather than simply to his money. Further, as Seiler (1922) also points out, the term proverb, as commonly used in everyday language, covers both figurative and literal traditional sayings. As a consequence or a corollary of this fact, standard collections of traditional sayings group both figurative and literal examples together under the heading of proverbs. For these reasons I prefer to recognize as proverbs both those which (customarily) require figurative interpretations and those which are (customarily) amenable to straightforward literal interpretation as well as those lying between these two extremes. The discussion so far has centered on metaphor in proverbs simply because Aristotle noted their metaphoric nature. But in addition to the vagueness of the term revealed above, metaphoric has often been used in genuinely ambiguous fashion to mean sometimes a particular type of figure and other times semantic figures generally, i.e. including synecdoche, metonymy, personification, hyperbole etc. To avoid confusion I label figurative any and all proverbs which cannot be fully interpreted as freely formed compositional structures, and metaphoric a subset of these requiring a special type of interpretation. The interpretation of all types of figurative proverbs makes up the subject matter of chapter 5. To summarize this section, figurative meaning has been considered by some scholars a common property and by others a defining characteristic of proverbs. But the difference between literal and figurative sayings is a matter of degree, and many sayings can be either literal or figurative from one context to the next. So figurative meaning cannot serve as a true defining property, at least until it has been more rigorously defined. In particular, the various types of figures in proverbs must be

3.2 Structural proverb definitions

51

identified. The classification of both literal and figurative sayings as proverbs accords with nontechnical usage of the term and standard collections. To conclude the entire section on the poetic features of proverbs, we can say that both prosody and figuration are common attributes of proverbs, but neither amounts to a criterion of definition for the genre.

3.2 Structural proverb definitions Despairing of the lack of precision and testable content in traditional proverb definitions, some paremiologists have suggested defining the proverb in structural terms. Both Barley (1972) and Kuusi (1972) present insights on proverb structure, which we shall review below in the discussions of figurative proverbs and proverb ideas respectively, but only Milner (1969 a, 1969 b) and Dundes (1975) have literally proposed structural definitions of the proverb. In the following I critically review first Milner's suggested quadripartite structures then Dundes' topic-comment structures as possible bases of a proverb definition.

3.2.1 Quadripartite structures Milner (1969 a: 200) states that, "the most important characteristic of a traditional saying is the symmetrical structure of its form and content." As a direct corollary of this, Milner proposes that the popularity of such a saying depends upon how well its symmetry of meaning matches its symmetry of form. Further, the most characteristic form of the traditional saying "consists of a statement in four parts" (1969 a: 200; Milner's italics). Each of these four parts or quarters can be assigned a positive ( + ) or negative (—) value according as it is good or bad, favorable or harmful; and the four quarters can be grouped into two halves, which count as negative when the two quarters they

52

3 Defining the proverb

contain bear opposite signs ( + and —) and as positive when they bear like signs ( + and + or — and —). So Milner develops for the proverbs New brooms sweep clean and Waste not want not respectively the following analyses.

+

+

new

brooms

+

sweep

clean

+

+

+

waste

not

+

want

not

+

Extending the analysis to proverbs such as A fair exchange is no robbery and A friend in need is a friend indeed with more than four word surface structures, Milner simply ignores such function words as articles, prepositions and the copula: + + a fair

exchange

+

is no

robbery

+

a friend

in need

—

is a friend

indeed

+

+

+

+

When more than one meaningful term occurs within a single quarter, Milner assigns it a value just as if it were a complete quarter; then values within the quarter are computed in the same way as values for quarters within halves are. Consider the

3.2 Structural proverb definitions

53

following analyses which Milner offers for Faint heart never won fair lady and England has mild winters but hard summers.

( -

faint

+)

( -

+)

never

heart

fair

lady

+

+

+ (England has) mild but hard

won

+ +

+ winters

+

summers

+ These analyses in particular and Milner's thesis in general raise a number of questions. Milner himself (1969 a: 201) admits that his assignment of plus and minus values to individual terms and quarters seems arbitrary. But he implies that anyone familiar with the proverbs in question and their function in Anglo-American society would arrive at the same assignments: "Even granted that one can, with a reasonable degree of confidence, give correct values to words from our own language and culture, are not the criteria likely to be purely subjective when dealing with, say, French or German, let alone Chinese or Samoan?" (201). In this statement alone, Milner glosses over several problems. First, he begs one question in assuming that others would even identify the same halves, quarters and sub-quarters he does. This assumption further entails identification of the same words as meaningful rather than as purely functional and of the same expressions as parenthetical and valueless as in the case of England in the example above. Milner begs a second question by assuming that others will agree that individual words can meaningfully be assigned plus and minus values in any but an ad hoc way at all. As Dundes (1975: 964—65) points out, the individual structural element cannot be evaluated in isolation

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3 Defining the proverb

from the whole syntagmatic framework of the proverb or the whole relevant proverbial paradigm. But if the individual values can only be determined in light of the proverbial whole, they cannot then be cited as definitional criteria for proverb structures without circularity. In addition to the arbitrariness of his plus and minus assignments, and ultimately more damaging to his thesis, Milner simply claims fundamental status for his quadripartite structure without offering any objective support for it. In fact, he makes a point of denying the quantitative testability of his thesis. Milner writes (1969 a: 200) that quadripartite form is the most typical, though not the statistically most common for proverbs. Later (1969 a: 202) he explains this comment to some extent by saying that originally quadripartite proverbs may have been shortened to tripartite, bipartite and even unipartite structures through continued usage. He further undermines his own thesis in Milner (1969 b: 380) by claiming that the four part character of proverbs is a "hidden structure which must be perceived by the unconscious level of our minds." By this stage Milner's thesis has become unfalsifiable. We cannot appeal to an objective count, since proverbs are fundamentally but not necessarily statistically quadripartite. Individual examples of one, two or three part proverbs can be accounted for as surviving remains of originally quadripartite structures. And, if all else fails, Milner can fall back on "hidden structure" or some "unconscious level." It is not necessary here to offer detailed criticism of Milner's thesis along all the lines indicated by the problems mentioned above. Even on a generous, general interpretation, Milner (1969 a and 1969 b) states only that many proverbs can be analyzed as quadripartite on the basis of their surface structures, others on the basis of their historical surface structures and still others on the basis of some unconsciously perceived hidden (or deep?) structure. But this provides absolutely no basis for a structural proverb definition. It makes sense to look for a historical form only once we know a statement to be proverbial in nature. Also, while four part structure may be common or even mandatory in proverbs or in items of folklore generally, nothing prevents non-proverbs from assuming quadripartite

3.2 Structural proverb definitions

55

form, so that this property cannot serve as the single defining criterion of a proverb in any event. Milner (1969 a: 200) mentions this fact himself, but he does not draw any conclusions from it for his structural definition of the proverb. Since many of the arguments and examples marshalled below in opposition to Dundes' (1975) bipartite, topic-comment structural analysis pertain mutatis mutandis to an even greater degree to Milner's quadripartite analysis, no more detailed critique of the latter need be undertaken.

3.2.2 Topic-comment structures Dundes (1975) favors a structural over a functional definition of the proverb just as Milner does, but he criticizes Milner (1969 a) on several counts. First, Dundes sees in Milner's assignment of plus and minus configurations a system for classifying proverbs rather than a basis for their definition. Second, he demonstrates the subjectivity of Milner's assignments themselves. Third, in consonance with comments above, he faults Milner for "throwing away empirical data" (1975: 962) by claiming proverbs without quadripartite structures to be survivals of originally quadripartite forms. Dundes introduces an important improvement over Milner by specifying the domain of his analysis more precisely. Whereas Milner seems to waver in considering sometimes lexical-syntactic structure and sometimes semantic structure quadripartite, Dundes (1975: 963) argues that only underlying structural formulas provide a basis for definition. The formulas underlying such proverbs as Like father, like son, No rose without a thorn and Better late than never reduce to like X like Y, no X without Y and better X than Y respectively, where X and Y are variables which can be replaced by different expressions to yield full proverbs. We return to the problems of the semantic interpretation of proverbs constructed on such formulas in chapter 4. As an alternative to Milner's quadripartite structure, Dundes proposes that proverbs, like riddles (cf. Georges and Dundes

56

3 Defining the proverb

1963), depend upon topic-comment structures. Any proverb must identify the thing talked about (the topic) and say something about it (the comment). Together the topic and comment make up what Dundes calls a descriptive element. Consequently, as Dundes (1975: 965) notes, "it is theoretically impossible to have a one word proverb." Proverbs with a single descriptive element in English are e. g.: Money talks, Opposites attract and Time flies. Statistically more common are proverbs with multiple descriptive elements. This group further divides into equational proverbs such as Time is money, Boys will be boys, He who hesitates is lost, on the one hand, and oppositional proverbs, on the other. Many different forms of opposition are represented in proverb structures. At its simplest, opposition involves nothing more than negation as in the formulas X is not Y, e. g. All is not gold that glisters, and X does not make Y, e. g. One swallow does not make a summer. More complex oppositions appear in such formulas as Better X than Y, e.g. Better buy than borrow, and If you have X you can not have Y, e. g. You can not have your cake and eat it. Dundes further mentions proverbs with equational formulas but semantically oppositional halves, e.g. One man's meat is another man's poison, and those in which both topics and both comments are members of contrastive pairs, e.g. Last hired, first fired and Here today, gone tomorrow. The main problem with Dundes' analysis is that he commits the same error he faults Milner for, viz. his attempt at definition turns into a system of classification based on the presence or absence of opposition, in the meaning or in the formula itself etc. Dundes lets this classification system obscure and even contradict his original provision to consider only formulas in his definition. Once we strip away the classification system, Dundes' proverb definition reduces to this: a proverb must contain one or more descriptive elements consisting in turn of a topic and a comment. As a definitional criterion, this gives us very little to go on. It might serve to distinguish the proverb from the proverbial phrase or from other sub-sentential units, but it cannot be cited as a defining characteristic of the proverb vis-d-vis any other linguistic entity capable of functioning as a full, propositional

3.2 Structural proverb definitions

57

statement, as discussed in § 2.1.1.2. So it provides no grounds for distinguishing proverbs from slogans, aphorisms and quotable quotes generally. Indeed, there seems to be great agreement among linguists that any full sentence or statement in a text can be analyzed in terms of old information and new information, of topic and comment or of the equivalent pair of terms: theme and rheme. So while Dundes' definition attempt possesses some general validity at first glance, it ends up too broad to be of serious interest ultimately. To summarize first Dundes' attempt to define the proverb in terms of topic-comment structure, we have seen that topiccomment structure is too broad a notion to distinguish the proverb from other items. By way of summarizing the whole section, we can generalize and relativize the common content of both Milner's (1969 a, 1969 b) and Dundes' (1975) theses to the statement that most proverbs exhibit binary structure (cf. Seiler 1922: 207-218; Kuusi 1972). This statement holds for proverb formulas and ideas (Taylor 1962: 16 ff.; Kuusi 1972; Röhrich and Mieder 1977: 60 ff.), if not for proverb surface structures as such. But even if we can generally construct binary analyses for proverbs we encounter, this is a far cry from the claim that binary structure provides a recognition criterion for proverbs. And certainly there is no a priori reason why all proverbs should adhere to a single structural type. Further, both Milner and Dundes show that proverbs may be classified on the basis of how (or whether) they realize binary structure. Consequently, it seems most expedient to identify multiple standard proverb formulas, saying adherence to any one of them suffices for proverb status. Clearly traditional, proverbial sayings which match no formula can then be classified as non-standard in form but retained in the class of proverbs. Of course, many of these standard proverb formulas will turn out to be binary or even quadripartite according to some system of analysis, but this remains an empirical fact about a certain number of proverbs rather than a definitional criterion proper.

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3 Defining the proverb

3.3 Supercultural versus ethnographic genre Ben-Amos (1969) argues that folklorists have consistently confounded supercultural with ethnographic genres, and that they have been troubled by the discrepancies between the two. Abrahams (1969) also notes an ambiguity in the term genre between what he calls (1) supercultural literary type and (2) ethnographic type; cf. Barley (1974 a) on genre interculturally versus genre in a given culture. All three writers agree that we must recognize the differences between the two, if we are to arrive at consistent sets of definitions. We create problems for ourselves by attempting to force ethnographic descriptions of folklore in a particular community into preconceived, supercultural categories. Ben-Amos (1969) advises folklorists to begin the study of ethnic genres by consulting the metafolklore of the culture in question, i.e. what the people themselves believe about their own folklore, how they classify and define it. If however a person is interested in comparing various genres across cultures, he should begin with and stick to his supercultural categories, no matter how poorly they fit in the case of any individual culture. Both supercultural and ethnographic definitions of items of folklore have their appropriate uses and advantages, but they must be kept separate to avoid confusion. For the concrete problem of defining the proverb these general considerations have several consequences. First, we are wrong to despair of discovering a definition adequate both in ethnographic and in supercultural, literary terms. Such a definition is theoretically impossible. If our supercultural categories did turn out to match exactly the ethnographic genres recognized in some culture, this would be pure coincidence with no theoretical implications. Second, we must distinguish two simultaneously valid types of proverb definition. For the purposes of supercultural definition, we must differentiate the proverb from other genres occurring commonly, though not necessarily universally, at least in the cultures under consideration. In particular, we should be careful to distinguish the proverb from such single-statement

3.4 Definition

via feature

matrix

59

literary genres as the aphorism and the epigram. The parameters of classification must be universally applicable. For the purposes of ethnographic definition, however, we must differentiate the proverb from the other genres (of folklore) recognizable in the culture under investigation. In particular, we should be careful to distinguish the proverb from the proverbial phrase, the riddle, the curse etc. The parameters of classification should be derived from and must be appropriate to the culture under investigation, but not necessarily to any other culture or universally. Third and related to the foregoing point, the criteria appropriate to each type of definition must also differ. Appropriate to the supercultural classification of essentially literary categories are such parameters as the full grammatical sentence versus the dependent grammatical phrase and traditional, stored items versus freely formed items etc.; appropriate to the ethnographic classification of supposedly traditional, stored items are such parameters as conversational versus non-conversational, fixed form versus free form and didactic versus entertaining. The only way to amalgamate the two types of definitions in an attempt to cover all the possible characteristics of proverbs relevant for any purpose would be to simply list indiscriminately whatever properties differentiate the proverb from any other linguistic or folkloristic item. This leads to the fourth consequence of Ben-Amos' (1969) distinction between supercultural and ethnographic modes of definition, a consequence drawn by Barley (1974 a), viz. the only adequate definition of the proverb (or of any other item of folklore) consists of a set of values for a whole battery of classificational properties. This consequence provides a natural transition into the following section on the definition of the proverb by means of a feature matrix.

3.4 Definition via feature matrix Barley (1974 a: 880) argues that in defining the proverb and other items of folklore one should "forget the genres and concentrate on the features." A description of an item should

60

3 Defining the proverb

include all the features relevant in any case, even seemingly redundant ones, in order to avoid a definition adequate for some purpose but not for others. Barley suggests that the proverb be defined and related to other items of folklore by means of a set of features arranged into a matrix. Each feature ist a + , a — or a + / — sign indicating the presence, absence or optional presence of a given classificational property. A characteristic of any item may be considered a classificational property if it differentiates that item from any other item according to some parameter in some environment. Barley (1974 a: 881) structurally relates what he terms the members of the "Modern English genre system" according to "semiotic features" as in Figure 1.

manipulates logical relations

statement form

fixed form

metaphorical

proverb

+

+

+

+

riddle

+

—

—

maxim

+

+

+

—

proverbial phrase

+

—

+

+

+/-

Figure 1

Barley does not defend his choice of classificational properties, nor his individual assignments of features. He leaves it unclear what he means by "manipulates logical relations": if maxims such as Live and let live and proverbial phrases such as To face the music manipulate logical relations, then I cannot imagine what sorts of linguistic entities do not. Also unexplained is Barley's characterization of the clearly linguistic properties of statement form and fixed form as "semiotic features." But despite these shortcomings in Barley's presentation and terminology, the basic suggestion of definition via feature

3.4 Definition

via feature

matrix

61

matrix has definite advantages over traditional genre by genre definitions (a more complete feature matrix definition of the proverb will be attempted in § 3.5.1 ff.). First, as Barley himself points out, the validity of the feature matrix definition is not limited to any particular purpose. If all the features are listed which differentiate any genre from any other genre related to it on the basis of some further parameter, then whatever features are necessary for any given purpose can be retrieved from the feature matrix. So a single feature matrix will supply all the information necessary for either a supercultural or an ethnographic definition; also for the purpose of differentiating, say, the proverb from the proverbial phrase or the (advertising) slogan, appropriate features can be selected from the matrix. Second, the feature matrix provides a convenient means of comparing related genres. More closely related genres might also be grouped spatially closer to one another in the matrix for ease of comparison, just as the various definitional properties might be ordered in revealing ways. Third, representation via feature matrix reminds us that genre labels such as proverb and maxim are simply convenient abbreviations for sets of features. The features are more basic than the genre labels. Once a unit such as Live and let live has been defined by Barley's features, + manipulates logical relations, + full statement, + fixed form, — metaphorical, along with such additional features as + traditional, + conversational, +didactic and so on deriving from the discussion above, the decision to label it a maxim or a proverb does not much matter. If we are interested in traditional, metaphorical sayings only, we can choose to exclude literal sayings like Live and let live on the basis of the metaphorical feature. If however we are interested in traditional sayings generally, we can include Live and let live. Whether we apply the term proverb to one or both of these classes is of secondary importance. Again one might want to investigate metaphorical traditional genres as a group, a group identifiable on the basis of Barley's feature matrix, but with no inclusive cover term. Definition via feature matrix guarantees this group a supercultural status equal to that of any group which happens to enjoy a genre label in

62

3 Defining the proverb

the corresponding ethnographic classification system. Given definition via feature matrix, no group defined on the basis of a particular feature is more ad hoc than any other group, whether either bears an ethnographic genre label or not. This suggests a fourth and final advantage offered by the feature matrix method of definition. Just as a feature matrix provides for identification of groups more inclusive than any individual ethnographically attested class it defines (e. g. the set of traditional sayings includes both proverbs and maxims, while the set of metaphorical items of folklore includes all proverbs and proverbial phrases as well as some riddles in Barley's scheme of classification), so it also naturally lends itself to a further sub-classification of the entities it defines. On the model of Barley's distinction of + metaphorical versus —metaphorical sayings into proverbs and maxims respectively, we can continue to break down the class of proverbs into ever smaller groups. And each of these sub-groups might be considered separately and labeled, if necessary for supercultural purposes or if it turned out to be attested in some particular ethnographic genre system. As in the case of more inclusive groups, such subgroups are no less real or interesting for lacking labels (in some ethnographic system). Barley's definitional property ± metaphorical can itself be analyzed into metaphoric proper versus synecdochic and metonymic, and each of these classes of figures can be further specified; see chapter 5. One could similarly introduce ±prosodic as a definitional property, which might then also be analyzed into separate properties such as ± rhyming, ± alliterative, ± assonant etc. No matter which characteristics are ultimately chosen as definitional properties, which serve to distinguish labeled genres and which simply sub-divide these genres into smaller classes, the device of the feature matrix provides a felicitous means of defining, relating and subclassifying genres of folklore, including the proverb. Two shortcomings of feature matrix definition must nevertheless be mentioned. First, definition via feature matrix entails the claim, implicit in the preceding discussion, that all the features involved in the definition of a given genre are of equal importance for its

3.4 Definition

via feature

matrix

63

particular character. In the case of the proverb on Barley's (1974: 881) definition, this means that the manipulation of logical relations, statement form, fixed form and metaphorical meaning are all necessary, and all equally necessary properties of the proverb. This contradicts first of all Aristotle's implication {Rhetoric III, xi, 14) that their metaphoric meaning is the essential property of proverbs. It further contradicts e. g. Seller's (1922: 2 ff.) assertion that the traditional nature of proverbs as items of folklore is their fundamental characteristic, and one from which many of their other properties can be derived. To cite just two further contradictory theses, both Milner (1969 a, 1969 b) and Dundes (1975) argue the centrality of structural considerations in defining the proverb. This limitation in the method of definition via feature matrix cannot be overcome by choosing a single central feature or cluster or features nor by setting up a ranking of definitional properties, because such procedures would mean a return to the traditional mode of genre definition based on a small number of essential properties, perhaps with one fundamental property dominating the others. Second, if +/— features indicating optional presence of a property are admitted in definitional matrices, then different sets of features can result in the same genre classification. For instance, given for both cases the constant feature description: + traditional, + conversational, + didactic, + manipulates logical relations, + statement form, + fixed form and + metaphorical, the two opposite sets of features + syntactic parallelism, + alliteration versus — syntactic parallelism, — alliteration (as well as mixed combinations of these features) lead to the genre label proverb, because such properties as syntactic parallelism and alliteration are optional for proverbs. This result, however, fails to account for the intuition that items exhibiting parallelism and alliteration are more prototypical members of the class of proverbs than are those without these properties. Traditional proverb definitions in mentioning these properties at all, if only as common or typical adjuncts to the essential properties, were more adequate in this respect. So definition based solely on a feature matrix fails to do justice to our feeling that e. g. Fast bind, fast find and Like master, like man rate higher on the scale of proverbiality than do examples with neither syntactic

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3 Defining the proverb

parallelism nor alliteration such as Time is money and No rose without a thorn. Again the definition via feature matrix cannot be revised without simultaneously foregoing its claim to certain advantages. If we forbid the occurrence of optional features, we return to traditional definitions in which features like parallelism and alliteration or prosody generally are simply listed as necessary. Then if we rate some features more highly than others, in particular by preferring + syntactic parallelism and + alliteration while continuing to allow — syntactic parallelism and — alliteration as well, we draw a line between features which distinguish genres and those which sub-classify these genres. In either case we weaken the arguments in favor of feature matrix definition and move back in the direction of traditional definition. So the great strength of feature matrix definition lies in its representation of the genre system with the relevant properties as a whole in relation to the individual genre. Its primary weakness lies in its inability to handle scalar differences between items in a single class and between the properties themselves. It consequently seems most expedient to employ feature matrix definition to determine the place of the proverb within the whole genre system, mindful of the two caveats just discussed, but to complement it with consideration of scalar relations among the defining properties and among the proverbs themselves. Thus the feature matrix appropriate for definition of the proverb will contain, somewhat redundantly, the features + traditional, + conversational and + fixed form, among others, but it cannot include commentary on their interrelation. The feature matrix must be supplemented by remarks to the effect that the form fixedness of the proverb is a necessary precondition of its recognition as a traditional item in conversation. Without fixedness of form the proverb would be lost in the flow of conversation, so that the features + traditional and + conversational in effect combine to predict the feature + fixed form. Note that traditional items which are set off from conversation proper, e. g. the riddle, the joke and the tale, need not exhibit fixedness of form, because other factors insure their recognition as such. The combination of the features

3.5 A linguistically founded proverb definition

65

+ conversational and + traditional also allows us to predict that the proverbial phrase exhibits form fixedness, as does the maxim, if considered as a genre separate from the proverb, as in the feature matrix reproduced from Barley (1974 a: 881) above. Without supplementary comments like the foregoing, the definition of the proverb via feature matrix is a useful means of representation and comparison, but it lacks explanatory value. The next section includes a feature matrix definition for the proverb and related items along with additional comments on relations between the definitional properties.

3.5 A linguistically founded proverb definition In this section I develop a definition of the proverb on the basis of the conclusions reached in the critical linguistic examination of traditional, structural and feature matrix definitions so far in this chapter. Actually I will be proposing more than a single definition, since, as we have seen, both feature matrix and single genre definitions have their own justifications. I begin with the problem of feature matrix definition, because the feature matrix arrived at can then serve as the basis for both the ethnographic and the supercultural definitions, one of the advantages claimed for feature matrix definitions above.

3.5.1 Feature matrix definition In order to arrive at a set of properties sufficient for distinguishing the proverb from all other literary and folkloristic genres, let us briefly review the conclusions of the sections on traditional and structural proverb definitions.

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First, we saw that some such property as the full or propositional statement distinguishes the proverb from the proverbial phrase. The difficulty with this property was defining it in such a manner that it did not exclude certain items intuitively felt to be proverbs along with proverbial phrases. Second, pithiness turned out to be a property of proverbs predictable from other properties such as their relative shortness as texts, their frequently being elliptical, figurative or both. Consequently pithiness must be rejected as a defining property as such. Third, traditionality in the proverb was equated with being in common use in a linguistic community or in one of its lectal groups over a period of time, say more than one generation. The property of traditionality is important for distinguishing the proverb from original, freely formed utterances and from authored items such as slogans or aphorisms. Fourth, all proverbs seem to exhibit either a direct or an indirect didactic tendency, and hence to lend themselves to didactic function in some context. In a general way, then, we can accept didactic content or tendency as a defining property of the proverb. Fifth, once fixedness of form is understood as a limitation on variation to the end of ensuring recognizability, rather than as complete frozenness, it provides a viable defining property. But recall from the previous section that fixedness in proverbs can be predicted on the basis of their being traditional and conversational. Nevertheless, we can include fixedness in the feature matrix definition, because it distinguishes the proverb from the riddle, the joke etc. Sixth, poetic features in proverbs take the form of either prosody or figuration (or both), and these properties can be further analyzed to help subclassify proverbs. Prosody has generally been considered a common but not a defining property of proverbs, whereas at least some writers have seen figuration as a defining property of the proverb vis-d-vis the cliche. But whether the feature matrix distinguishes the proverb from the cliche along this (and only this) parameter or not, it must include the property of figuration in any case to distinguish the proverbial phrase from whatever items are not necessarily

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figurative. So the property will be available to draw the relevant distinction if. necessary or desirable for some purpose. At the same time, the property + prosodic must appear in our feature matrix as a defining characteristic of the genre song, so that it can also be cited in the feature definition of the proverb, if only as optional. Seventh, in the sections on the structural definition of the proverb (§3.2.1—2.2) we saw that neither quadripartite nor bipartite topic-comment structure could be considered as defining properties for the whole range of proverbs. At most these properties serve to further analyze the class of proverbs into smaller groups. But since quadripartite and bipartite structure do not occur as properties distinguishing any ethnographic or analytic genres, they will not be included in our feature matrix definition of the proverb and related genres, in contrast to the properties of figuration and prosody just discussed. We can now turn to the question of which properties should be included in the feature matrix and why. I have been adhering to the till now implicit principle that a classificational property in the definitional matrix must be one which distinguishes at least one relevant genre from another sharing some additional property with it; cf. the beginning of the previous section. It seems reasonable that definitional properties in the feature matrix should be distinctive in the structuralist sense that they distinguish units in the system in question, and I propose to retain this principle in the following.

3.5.1.1 The properties (1) Potential free conversational turn: The first potential definitional property mentioned in the preceding section was that requiring the proverb to be a full or propositional statement. In §3.1.1 above I argued that these terms were superior to complete or grammatical sentence, because the latter were too narrow on their customary interpretation to include many structures traditionally considered proverbial. I further indicated that statement should be defined in terms of or replaced entirely

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by the notion of the potential (initial) conversational turn; cf. Fries (1952). This notion is empirically founded, objectively testable and independent of any particular grammatical theory, all advantages Fries himself points out. Moreover, the notion is particularly suited to the definition of the proverb, itself a conversational genre, in opposition to such genres as riddles, jokes, songs and tales which interrupt the flow of free conversation or occur in special ritual circumstances. Ultimately following Fries (1952), but more immediately work on the structure of conversation such as Schegloff (1968), Schegloff and Sacks (1973), Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974), Schegloff (1978) (cf. Abercrombie 1965), I defined in Norrick (1981a: 5) the notion free conversational turn as a discrete contribution to an ongoing conversation which the speaker ends voluntarily (i. e. without being interrupted). This definition is intended to exclude so-called attention signals and interjections like m'hm, yeh?, wow! and second halves of adjacency pairs (cf. Schegloff and Sacks 1973: 295 — 296; Schegloff 1978: 8 4 - 8 5 ; but also Wunderlich 1976: 346 ff.) such as the answer to a summons or to a question, and the acceptance or rejection of an offer, e. g. the second term in each of the following pairs: Harry?: Yes; How is it?: Fine.; Have a seat!: Okay.; Try mine!: No, thanks. Such possible conversational turns as these are not free, in that they depend upon the foregoing turn for their interpretation, and they are consequently excluded. The notion of the potential free conversational turn provides an appropriate, empirical, testable replacement for that of the full or propositional statement. We can say that the proverb consists of one and only one potentially free conversational turn, or that the two are coextensive. Thus Fast bind, fast find can count as a proverb, while As fast as a dog can trot and To fash one's thumb cannot. So the notion of the potential free conversational turn is distinctive in the above sense: it distinguishes the proverb from the proverbial phrase and from genres characteristically containing multiple potentially free turns. It also suggests the fundamentally conversational nature of the proverb, although neither property entails the other.

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Thus the slogan is structurally a potential free conversational turn, although it does not typically occur in conversation; the curse (boast and taunt) typically occur in conversation, but need not structurally coincide with a single free turn. (2) Conversational: The fundamentally conversational nature of the proverb seen in § 2.1.1.2 has been taken for granted by Hain (1951) and Taylor (1962); Bascom (1965: 69), Seitel (1969: 145) and Green (1975) make explicit use of the property, but only Abrahams (1968 a, 1969; cf. 1975) cites it as a definitional property as such. Abrahams defines the proverb as a traditional conversational genre along with the curse, the taunt and the boast. Common short examples of these traditional genres are: You lily-livered sap-sucker (curse), Put your money where your mouth is (taunt), My pappy was a pistol, I'm a son of a gun (boast). These genres often contain multiple potentially free conversational turns, and differ in this respect from the proverb, which we saw to be characteristically coextensive with the free turn. Its conversational nature distinguishes the proverb from such traditional genres as the riddle, the joke, the tale and the song, since they interrupt the flow of conversation. When riddles, jokes, tales and songs occur in the course of a conversation, they are announced and set off from it in special ways. The proverb, by contrast, is usually woven into the fabric of the conversation, optionally marked only by what I have called proverbial affixes and infixes (in § 3.1.5). (3) Traditional: Traditionality as common use over a period of time must be taken as a basic defining property of the proverb. As pointed out earlier in the preceding section, traditionality is distinctive because it separates the proverb both from freely formed utterances and from authored items like slogans and aphorisms. I am calling cliches, jokes etc. traditional despite their sometimes short life span, because they are authorless and they "arise in recurring performances" (Abrahams 1969: 106; cf. §3.1.3 above). For purposes of the present study, the traditionality of examples is insured by their appearance in the ODEP. (4) Spoken: The property of being spoken rather than sung, chanted, danced etc. is defining for the proverb. It distinguishes

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the latter from the song, but also from genres which are most typically written, e. g. the aphorism and the epigram. (5) Fixed form: Fixed form serves as a defining property of the proverb, in that it distinguishes proverbs from free-phrase genres like the joke and the tale. Form fixedness can however be predicted on the basis of the proverb's traditional and conversational nature, as pointed out above (§3.1.5 and § 3.4), so that it is not strictly necessary in the definition of the proverb itself. (6) Didactic: Didactic tendency can be taken as a defining property of the proverb if it is understood as potential didactic use (due to evaluative meaning; cf. §3.1.4). Didactic tendency is distinctive for the proverb in distinguishing it from the proverbial phrase and other conversational genres such as the cliche, the curse, the taunt and the boast, as well as from the riddle, the joke etc. Fast bind, fast find is thus didactic in suggesting a general course of action, viz. to bind things fast if they are to be found quickly. Like father, like son is didactic in suggesting that one should expect sons to be like their fathers. By contrast, As fast as a dog can trot, To fawn like a spaniel, The fat is in the fire and You lily-livered sap-sucker surely suggest no general course of action or anything similar. (7) General: The proverb is typically general and impersonal in meaning (qua SPI rather than literal surface reading), even when a particular speaker applies it to the situation of a particular hearer. The curse, taunt and boast, by contrast, are fundamentally personal, directed at some particular hearer. The joke and tale characteristically concern particular persons and thus also count as —general. So the proverb is distinguished from these and other conversational genres by the feature + general. The particular, narrow application of such cliches as So much the worse for the facts and Your father was no glazier from the F-Corpus prevents their classification as proverbs. Note also the past tense in the second example and in the cliche I never fared worse than when I wished for my supper. The past tense limits their applicability and conspires with the deictic pronouns you and I to ensure them a lack of generality, and hence a classification as cliches rather than proverbs.

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(8) Figurative: As noted in §3.1.6.2, figurative meaning provides a feature distinguishing the proverbial phrase from all other not necessarily figurative genres, whether it also distinguishes the proverb from the cliche and the literal saying or not. So it will be among the properties relevant to the feature matrix definition of the proverb and related items. (9) Prosodic: While prosody is an optional rather than a defining property for the proverb, it can nevertheless be included in the feature matrix since it functions as a distinctive property separating the song from the tale, the joke etc. (10) Entertaining: Certain genres such as the joke, the tale and the song are partially defined by their intention to entertain, whatever else they may do in addition. The proverb entertains only incidentally or in cleverly making a didactic point, so it must be —entertaining. But the properties ±entertaining and ± didactic are not simple opposites. The cliche is typically neither entertaining nor didactic, whereas the aphorism and the epigram are optionally didactic in addition to being necessarily entertaining, just as the riddle, the joke, the tale etc. are. (11) Humorous: The mandatory presence of humor is the only feature distinguishing the joke proper from the tale, and one of the features distinguishing the Wellerism from the proverb and the cliche: without the identification of the alleged sayer, e. g. blind Hugh in That I would fain see, said blind Hugh, the Wellerism remains a humorless cliche. Nevertheless both the tale and the proverb are optionally humorous. Apparently all traditional and literary genres optionally make use of humor. The properties ± humorous and + entertaining are independent of one another, because individual instances of a genre may be humorous regardless of its general intention. The foregoing properties suffice to distinguish the proverb from all other traditional, literary and linguistic genres or items. They also serve to distinguish a great many other genres and items from one another. But because the proverb is the object of this investigation, we need not concern ourselves with distinctions between items in sets themselves clearly distinct from the proverb. Consequently I provide no means of distinguishing the aphorism from the epigram or the curse from the taunt and the boast. Suffice it to say that the crucial

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distinctions cannot be drawn on the basis of the properties in the feature matrix below. The item curse classified in the matrix is intended as representative of the boast and taunt as well; and aphorism represents both the aphorism and the epigram. This holds mutatis mutandis for the tale, the joke, the song etc., which stand for their respective sub-genres. The proverbial phrase differs from the phrasal verb (or phrasal idiom) in being necessarily figurative, so that no special distinction need be drawn between the proverb and the phrasal verb. One further caveat: while the feature + didactic is the one primarily responsible for distinguishing the proverb from the Wellerism in the matrix below, the most obvious distinction between concrete instances of the two genres is their purely structural difference. In particular, the Wellerism must take the form: X, said NPj (as NPi + VP), while the proverb may not. And this situation seems fairly common. Feature matrix definition, like any other, prefers general properties to specific ones, and may therefore fail to express the most obvious or salient distinction between two items, so long as they can be differentiated in general terms.

3.5.1.2 The feature matrix We are now ready to present a feature matrix definition of the proverb and related genres based on the properties just defined. In Figure 2, + indicates typical presence of the property in question, — indicates its characteristic absence, and 0 indicates optional presence. Note first of all that Figure 2 adheres to the definition of the proverb as optionally figurative in agreement with Seiler (1922: 7), Taylor (1950: 902) and others but in opposition to Barley (1972: 741 and 1974a: 881; cf. § 3.1.6.2), Greimas (1970: 309ff.) and others. Nevertheless, the proverb is distinguished from the cliche: first because it is typically didactic, while the cliche is not, and second because its general character contrasts with the lack of generality in the cliche. Second, the characterization of the proverb as optionally figurative gives rise to an additional contrast with the proverbial

entertaining

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3.5 A linguistically founded proverb definition

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phrase. The proverb has usually been distinguished from the proverbial phrase solely or primarily on the basis of its being self-contained (Seiler 1922: 2), a propositional statement (Dundes 1975: 970), a complete sentence (Röhrich and Mieder 1977: 2 — 3) etc., the property here expressed as coextensionality with the potential free conversational turn. But Seiler (1922: 2) points out that the proverb must also be didactic, whereas the proverbial phrase never is, providing a further distinction

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3 Defining the

proverb

represented in Figure 2. Consequently, the proverb would remain clearly distinct from the proverbial phrase even if both were considered typically figurative. The other feature assignments should be unproblematic, and I shall not motivate them one by one, except as they directly concern the proverb and come in for further discussion below. But before concluding this section, I want to comment on some redundancies pertinent to the matrix in Figure 2. We noted above that items characterized as both traditional and conversational are predictably, redundantly also of fixed form. Nontraditional items like the aphorism and the slogan have fixed form because they are associated with a particular author or source. Consequently, + fixed form follows from either + traditional, + conversational or + source. That is to say that texts are repeated in fixed form either because they are traditional or because they are associated with some particular source. Further, any genre characterized as + traditional can redundantly be characterized as —source and conversely. Also mentioned above was the redundancy of the feature + entertainment for items marked + humorous. Items characterized as + entertainment might be sub-classified as ± narrative, + dramatic etc., corresponding not only to different literary genres, but also to features of traditional genres like the song and the tale. Note too that + didactic items are redundantly —entertaining, but not vice versa.

3.5.1.3 Feature priorities for the proverb

One of the weaknesses in the feature matrix mode of definition pointed out above lies in the fact that all the properties listed count as equally important. A few comments are in order here then about the relative importance of certain properties for the proverb. First, certain properties included in Figure 2 yield fewer truly distinctive features than others. In particular + figurative, + prosodic and ± humorous end up being optional for most of the genres listed. They contrast starkly with ± conversational, ± traditional, ± general and ± entertaining, which each divide

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the whole matrix into clear + and — cases. Close to these latter four properties in distinctive value are ± spoken and ± fixed form, which divide the matrix into + and — cases with but one optional case each. These properties should be more heavily weighted in the individual genre definitions of the proverb. Second, Figure 2 also reveals the peculiar importance of the property ± didactic, which distinguishes the proverb from all other + traditional genres. Note also the property ± conversational, which splits the traditional genres into two subclasses. Again these two properties should be more highly rated in treating the proverb alone. Third, some combinations of two features suffice alone to distinguish the proverb from all other genres, e. g. + conversational, -I- didactic and + traditional, + general. Here too it seems features in such pairs should be more heavily weighted in the individual definitions of the proverb. The second weakness in the feature matrix mode of definition pointed out above concerned properties characterized as optional for a given genre. Optional properties make it possible for distinct combinations of features to lead to the same genre classification. In the case of the proverb, Figure 2 shows three different optional properties: + figurative, +prosodicand + humorous. In showing these properties as optional, the feature matrix definition in Figure 2 suggests that these properties are without any particular significance for the proverb, and that the prototypical proverb could have a + or a — value for each one. However, the association of the proverb with figurative meaning time and again since Aristotle's Rhetoric implies that + figurative proverbs are more prototypical than — figurative ones. In purely practical terms -I-figurative proverbs should be more highly valued than — figurative ones, because their figurative meaning makes them applicable in a wider range of situations than literal examples. In parallel fashion, prosody has often been mentioned as a defining or at least a typical characteristic of the proverb. Also prosody should make a proverb more memorable and more rhetorically effective, so that +prosodic proverbs should be more highly valued than — prosodic ones.

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Humor seems to me to be a truly neutral property without special significance for the proverb. Humor is appropriate to some (rhetorical) situations and proverb themes but not to others. One might suppose that humor and didactic tendency are antagonistic, as seen in the dual nature of the Wellerism. We can uphold the general feature matrix definition of the proverb and related genres, while still expressing the higher value attached to certain features for individual genres, if we recognize marked features as in phonology (cf. Chomsky and Halle 1968: 400 ff.; Cairns 1969). We can label + figurative and + prosodic as the unmarked, prototypical feature assignments for the proverb; and the features —figurative and — prosodic will count as marked for this genre. Nevertheless, as indicated in the feature matrix in Figure 2, proverbs may have either + or — values for these features. Of course this does not mean that these values for these features will be marked for all or even any other genres. The riddle for instance, is also characterized as optionally figurative and prosodic in Figure 2, but for it —figurative and —prosodic would seem to be the unmarked feature assignments. Markedness will then vary from one genre to the next as a means of making up for the system-orientation and lack of attention to individual genres in the feature matrix definition. Having established a set of definitional features sufficient for the distinctive classification of the proverb and related genres in a feature matrix, having constructed such a matrix and having discussed its redundancies and feature priorities, especially as they pertain to the proverb, we can go on to propose genrespecific definitions of the proverb in the following sections.

3.5.2 Genre definition In § 3.3 above we saw that ethnographic and supercultural definitions of a genre differ in theory and in purpose, so they must be differentiated in practice. The multi-genre classification cum definition via feature matrix in Figure 2 includes some features relevant to ethnographic definition, some relevant to supercultural definition, and some not directly relevant to the

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definition of the proverb proper at all. The latter were included primarily for the sake of distinguishing other genres, e.g. ± humor and ±prosodic, which are both optional for the proverb and do not provide the distinctive difference between it and any other genre. Relying on this feature matrix for comparative purposes and redundant feature specifications, we can reduce individual genre definitions to a minimum number of features and free them from redundancies. As we have also noted, individual genre definitions can include consideration of scalar ratings of relative importance among defining features in the form of marked versus unmarked feature assignments. With these differences in mind, let us consider first the ethnographic and then the supercultural definition of the genre proverb.

3.5.2.1 Ethnographic definition of the proverb For ethnographic purposes the proverb must be differentiated only from other + traditional genres, as classified in the feature matrix in Figure 2. So we can forget the slogan, the aphorism and other —traditional genres for the time being. We saw in the previous section that the property + conversational draws a major distinction within the class of 4- traditional genres. Limiting our attention to the genres which share conversational status with the proverb, we arrive at the set: proverbial phrase, curse, Wellerism, cliche, along with the proverb itself. Now a single additional feature, viz. either + didactic or 4- general, serves to define the proverb within a class already characterized as + traditional, +conversational. So we can say that, within the class of traditional genres, the proverb is the only typically + conversational, + didactic or + conversational, + general genre. On the basis of comments in the previous section, we can also declare these properties the most central to the definition of the proverb, even if further features like + potential free conversational turn and optional figurative meaning are included in its ethnographic definition. The latter features are not strictly distinctive for the proverb and are of secondary

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3 Defining the proverb

importance overall, but they do help characterize the ethnographic genre proverb. This gives us an ethnographic definition of the proverb as follows: The proverb is a traditional, conversational, didactic genre with general meaning, a potential free conversational turn, preferably with figurative meaning. This definition not only distinguishes the proverb from all other genres, it also characterizes the proverb according to its essential ethnographic features in Anglo-American culture.

3.5.2.2 Supercultural definition of the proverb For purposes of supercultural genre definition, the proverb must be distinguished from other related genres, irrespective of whether they are + traditional or not. This means we must include the slogan and the aphorism in our purview. We have seen already in the previous section how the proverb differs from the other + traditional genres, so that we can concentrate on distinguishing the proverb from the slogan and the aphorism here. On the basis of the feature matrix in Figure 2, the proverb differs from the slogan in being typically conversational and spoken as well as in being traditional. I have characterized the slogan as typically —conversational but optionally spoken, because it could occur in the course of an everyday conversation given its structure (hence the feature + potential free conversational turn), in spite of its fundamentally monologue character given its function; unlike the proverb, the slogan typically occurs in special contexts such as political speeches and oral or written advertisements. Also the slogan is always associated with a particular source or group, whereas the proverb belongs to the linguistic community as a whole. Notice that these distinguishing characteristics are functional and thematic in character. From the point of view of structure or style, slogans can closely resemble proverbs, and may even be modeled on them. The aphorism too must be distinguished from the proverb primarily along functional lines. Like the slogan and unlike the

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proverb, the aphorism is not typically conversational nor even spoken. If an aphorism occurred in a conversation at all, it would be quoted as an aphorism and as the work of a particular author. The aphorism arises in and becomes popular through the written rather than the spoken medium. We associate the aphorism with a particular author, just as we associate the slogan with a particular group or cause. A further important distinction between the aphorism and the proverb lies in the literary character of the aphorism with its primary aim of entertaining vis-d-vis the character of the proverb as folklore with its primarily didactic aim. Although the aphorism is a more literary genre than the slogan and is less likely to imitate proverb structure or style, these tendencies are not pronounced enough to allow differentiation of the aphorism from the slogan or the proverb. So as in the former case, we must rely on functional and thematic criteria. Bearing in mind the distinctions drawn between the proverb and other traditional genres in the previous section, we can propose as a supercultural definition of the proverb the following: the proverb is a typically spoken, conversational form with didactic function and not associated with any particular source.

Chapter 4

Literal proverb meaning

4.0 Introduction This chapter concerns literal readings for proverbs, in particular for proverbs not amenable to regular compositional semantic interpretation, say because they contain archaic or peculiarly proverbial syntactic constructions or lexical items. Such proverbs may turn out to be either literal or figurative, depending on the relation between the literal readings determined for them and their SPIs. Literal readings for regularly grammatical proverbs can be equated with their surface structures for present purposes. For instance, Like father, like son and The fairer the paper, the fouler the blot both adhere to proverb formulas, viz. like X like Y and the X-er the Y-er respectively, yet neither conforms to customary NP + VP syntactic structure in any regular fashion5. So special mechanisms besides regular compositional semantic principles are necessary to assign these proverbs literal readings. Such mechanisms make up the subject matter of this chapter. 6 5. Any syntax could be used with similar results. NP + VP is simply the best known type of analysis; but see just below for more. Only Heringer (1970, 1972) with his multiple basic sentence patterns (Satzbaupläne) could more easily incorporate p-formulas into the main grammar, perhaps calling them (stylistically) marked patterns; see chapter 7. 6. Again I do not go beyond regularization in offering interpretations, since it is not my purpose here to propose methods of semantic representation; cf. Note 1.

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Once assigned the literal reading 'father and son are alike' the proverb Like father, like son can be classified as literal, since this literal reading correlates with its SPI. By contrast, the literal reading 'the foulness of the blot is directly proportional to the fairness of the paper' for the proverb The fairer the paper, the fouler the blot differs from its SPI 'the offensiveness of a defect is directly proportional to the desirability of its environment', so that this proverb counts as figurative (see chapter 5 for a complete classification of proverb figures).

4.1 Why literal readings for proverbs? In order that they be recognized as such in the flow of conversation, proverbs must be relatively fixed in form, as we saw in § 3.1.5. In order that they be used and understood in a consistent manner, they must also be fixed in meaning. So speakers must store proverb forms along with their SPIs, just as they store single words as form-meaning units. In linguistic terms, for any language (community) there must be a proverb inventory with a number of entries, each entry consisting of a proverb and its SPI (cf. §6.1.1). The SPI appearing with a proverb in the inventory suffices as its ideational semantic contribution to whatever text it occurs in. Since proverbs are not freely generated, no analysis of their internal semantic structure is necessary to provide readings for them. But if all proverbs have SPIs, why do they require literal readings as well? First, psychologists have shown empirically that perception of their literal readings is crucially involved in the interpretation of proverbs: children to around age eleven and schizophrenics perceive only literal readings for proverbs; and even normal adults seem to perceive literal meanings for proverbs before working out their exact contextual figurative meanings (see Honeck et al. 1980 for discussion and references). Second, although we need not semantically analyze proverbs to provide them with SPIs, we must still account for speakers'

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ability to paraphrase and transform whole proverbs and parts of them on either their literal or their figurative readings. This ability is amply attested to in the wide-spread use of proverbs as templates; cf. discussion in § 2.1.1.1 —2.1.3. Third, we must also account for speakers' ability to form and interpret proverb-like constructions such as, say, Like baker, like bread or true proverbs they are not familiar with. Apparently speakers can work out both literal and figurative readings in such cases. So literal readings for proverbs are part of what native speakers know about them. Fourth, and most important in this study of proverbs as texts, proverbs must be assigned literal readings before their figurative status can be assessed, as exemplified in the foregoing section. Whether one can arrive at a consistent literal reading for a given proverb at all, and, if so, how this reading relates to its SPI, determines its classification as literal or figurative and its subclassification within these categories. Proverbs differ in this respect from freely formed sentences. A freely generated sentence counts as literal when it can be assigned a consistent reading by the standard mechanisms for the interpretation of straightforward compositional structures on the basis of the lexical readings of its components and their syntactic relations. A freely generated sentence counts as figurative when it can be assigned a consistent reading only by means of relating it to other (well-formed) sentences (cf. Katz 1964) or with the help of interpretive devices such as featuretransfer (Weinreich 1966; cf. van Dijk 1972 and Levin 1977), synecdochic, metaphoric and metonymic transfer (cf. Leech 1969 a, 1974; van Dijk 1975; Norrick 1981 b) in addition to the foregoing mechanisms. Strings which cannot be assigned a consistent reading in either fashion are either ungrammatical, nonsensical or both. By contrast, a proverb usually counts as literal when the reading assigned it by the standard mechanisms for the interpretation of straightforward compositional structures is identical with its SPI. A proverb then counts as figurative when the reading assigned it by these standard mechanisms is not identical with its SPI. Even proverbs which cannot be assigned consistent readings with the standard mechanisms and the additional

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4 Literal proverb meaning

interpretive devices mentioned above are not nonsensical, because proverbs necessarily have SPIs associated with them in the inventory. And they must be at least conditionally grammatical, because they exist as part of the language and remain productive as templates for freely formed utterances. So proverbs which resist interpretation as standard compositional structures must first be regularized or directly assigned literal readings before their figurative status can be assessed. Along with the first three points mentioned, this fact explains and justifies the treatment of literal proverb meaning in this investigation. But the necessity of treating productive formulas in any complete language description more than justifies interest in the basic problem of providing readings for conditionally grammatical structures in general and for proverbs in particular.

4.2 Ungrammatical proverbs A proverb or any other string of words counts as ungrammatical if it cannot be analyzed by means of the standard syntactic mechanisms of the language in question. Ungrammatical strings cannot be semantically interpreted in any direct fashion, since standard interpretive principles are conceived for regularly analyzable syntactic structures. And compositional semantic interpretation must proceed on the basis of some standard structural analysis. The most common form of structural analysis in recent years, that used in most structuralist and transformational grammars, analyzes the sentence (S) into a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP) as in (1); cf. Hockett (1958: 150 ff.), Chomsky (1965: 64 ff.), Lyons (1968: 209 ff.) among many others. (1)

(S(NP)(VP))

But alone in our F-Corpus (the first 200 items, including 141 proverbs, under the letter F in the ODEP) one finds 29 items adhering to the proverb definition from §3.5.1—3.5.2 which

4.2 Ungrammatical proverbs

85

cannot be thus analyzed. For instance, Fair without, foul within must be analyzed as (2), where A stands for adjective and AD for adverb; Like father, like son as (3), where Ν stands for noun; and Fair weather after foul as (4), where PP stands for prepositional phrase. 7 ( 2 )

(VP(VP

A

A D )

(

(3)

(np(NP Α Ν) (np A N))

(4)

(NP(NP) (PP))

V

p

A

A D ) )

These proverb structures cannot be generated by a regular grammar of English; if they could, the grammar would fail as a model of standard English structure. Some ungrammatical proverbs might be treated as cases of radical ellipsis, i. e. as the result either of an overextension of deletion processes or of failing to lexically fill nodes altogether. Of course the actual description of ellipsis depends upon the type of syntactic model one adopts, but for purposes of representing proverb surface structures I propose to stick with traditional structuralist bracketing conventions of the kind illustrated so far. Valency and dependency grammars are less suited to the description of ungrammatical proverbs, because many such proverbs lack precisely the verbal element central to these theories (cf. Tesniere 1965; Heringer 1970, 1972; Hudson 1976 a among others).

4.2.1 Radically elliptical proverbs It makes sense to speak of a proverb form as elliptical so long as its surface structure represents a proper subset of the constituents in a plausible syntactically complete paraphrase of it. Ungrammatical proverbs with surface structures underivable from such paraphrases cannot sensibly be treated as cases of ellipsis, and must be described in some other way. 7. The syntactic structures given ignore irrelevant details and may gloss over certain problems not directly at issue in this study. E. g. I analyse like in like X like Y as an A (djective) in (3) simply because like is generally an adjective on the pertinent reading. Actually I think like ... like amount to correlative conjunctions in the construction in question.

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4 Literal proverb meaning

Consider again the proverb Fair without, foul within. This proverb can be adequately paraphrased as That which is fair without is foul within or something similar; and this paraphrase can be straightforwardly handled as a regular compositional structure. It can be assigned the labeled bracketing shown in (5), where AP stands for adjective phrase. (5)

that) (S, which is fair without)) (vp(v be) ( AP foul within)))

(S(NP(N

Now the actual surface structure of Fair without, foul within can be analysed parallel to the structure of the paraphrase in (5); this treatment recalls Katz' (1964) assignment of readings to semi-sentences by relating them to similar but fully grammatical sentences. The constituents 'missing' from the proverb surface structure as compared to the paraphrase are represented by triangles, a notation introduced in Chomsky (1965: 122) and used in much transformational work since to indicate lexically unfilled nodes. This yields the structure (6): (6)

fair without)) (νρ(νΔ) (Ap foul within)))

(S(NP(NA) ( S , M

On the basis of this structure, our example proverb can be assigned a semantic reading by regular compositional principles. Parallel analyses can easily be constructed for the other similar proverbs in our F-Corpus, viz. Fair without, false within; Far from court, far from care; Far from eye, far from heart; Far from Jupiter, far from thunder. For some of these proverbs, and for all of them in some cases, the paraphrase derived by adding He who seems more appropriate than that derived by adding That which; the procedure remains the same, and the reading arrived at may fit better. Fair without, foul within, along with other proverbs like those just cited, meets the criterion for ellipsis set out above, because its surface constituents amount to a proper subset of those in its paraphrase. It furthermore counts as an example of radical ellipsis, because major nodes like that of the main verb (V) and the subject noun (N) remain lexically empty in violation of regular grammatical constraints in English. The constituents

4.2 Ungrammatical

proverbs

87

represented by A's in (6) are felt to be missing, so that Fair without, foul within and similar proverbs are perceived as truncated or incomplete. This is not the case for surface structures which have undergone regular deletion processes, i. e. in which certain specified nodes have been lexically unfilled. Thus speakers do not view as elliptical or truncated e.g. the sentences (7) —(9); the elements indicated by A's are not perceived as missing. (7) Jack is taller than Jill Δ. Δ = is tall (8) The stew is ready to eat Δ. Δ = it, the stew (9) Jill wants Δ to leave now. Δ = herself, Jill The absence of is tall in (7) is generally credited to a rule of Comparative Deletion (cf. Jackendoff 1971; Hankamer 1973), that of it or the stew in (8) to the rule of Complement Object Deletion (cf. Lasnik and Fiengo 1974; Norrick 1979 a), and that of herself or Jill in (9) to Equivalent ΝΡ Deletion (EQUI) (cf. Postal 1970; Grinder 1971). For general discussion see Sampson (1975) and Hudson (1976 a: 126 ff.). The deleted constituents or unfilled nodes in (7) — (9) are uniquely recoverable or identifiable (Chomsky 1965: 144 ff.), and the sentences are not ambiguous like the proverb. Radical ellipsis naturally leads to structural ambiguity. We saw above that different paraphrases were possible for a radically reduced proverb. Consequently, various syntactic analyses and ultimately various semantic analyses are then available for a single proverb. This reflects the well-known ambiguity of proverbs in particular and of elliptical constructions in general. Nevertheless, the ambiguity does not go beyond certain limits. The unfilled nodes are assigned semantically neutral items: he, one, it etc. for noun nodes and be for verb nodes. This corresponds to the broadest possible reading for the proverb in question. We would not accept a paraphrase like Two pears which looked fair without were exchanged for six apples which were foul within. Not only must the elliptical construction consist of a subset of the constituents in its syntactically complete paraphrase, but the additional items in the paraphrase must be semantically neutral in the context of the proverb.

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4 Literal proverb meaning

Examples in which the proverb context requires lexical choices in the paraphrase not absolutely neutral outside of context are the F-Corpus proverbs Far from home, near thy harm; Fast bind, fast find; Safe bind, safe find; Sure bind, sure find. The pronoun thy in the first example precludes paraphrases with he, one, it etc. The paraphrase must contain the pronoun thou: Far from home, thou art near thy harm. The inclusion here of the more specific thou (and art for agreement) rather than the more neutral he, one, it or even you is justified by the concrete presence of thy in the proverb. But there may be other reasons for lexical choices which are not the most neutral outside of context. Fast bind, fast find and the two parallel examples just cited contain no occurrences of pronouns which could force the choice of thou or you in their paraphrases, but the initial clause in each can most naturally be treated as imperative in mood, due to the form of the verb. If the initial clause in these examples is imperative, then they directly address the hearer and can therefore be said to imply you as the subject of bind, and consequently of find as well. This means paraphrases along the lines Fast bind and you fast find, in normal word order: Bind fast and you (will) find fast. The modal will stresses the causeeffect connection between the two clauses, but it is not strictly necessary. According to this paraphrase, the proverb amounts to a compound sentence consisting of two sub-sentences joined by and. Labeling the conjunction CNJ and the sub-sentences Si and S2 respectively, one can illustrate the syntactic structure of the former paraphrase with the surface word order of the proverb as (10), where IMP shows that Si is in the imperative mood. (10)

( s (s,IMP ( NP you) (VP fast bind)) (CNJ and) (S 2 (NP you) (Vp fast find))) Representing now all the constituents of (10) which do not appear in the surface structure of the proverbs as A's, one arrives at (11), which can serve as the basis for the semantic interpretation of the proverb on compositional principles. (11)

(sklMP (νρΔ) ( S 2 ( N P A ) (VP

fast bind)) (CWA) fast find))) (VP

4.2 Ungrammatical proverbs

89

Note that the understood subject you in Sj would not appear in the surface structure in any case, because Sj is imperative; its 'deletion' consequently does not contribute to the elliptical character of the sentence as the other missing constituents do. IMP simply shows Sj to be imperative, and has no lexical representation as such on any level. Before going on the further proverbs in which the imperative mood steers the paraphrase away from the most semantically neutral lexical choices outside of context, consider the sort of radical ellipsis illustrated by Fair weather after foul, which was analyzed as (4) above, repeated for ease of reference here. (4)

(NP(NPMPP))

This proverb can be paraphrased in grammatically complete form simply by adding there is to it: There is fair weather after foul. And this complete sentence allows for straight-forward compositional semantic interpretation. The proverb counts as radically elliptical, because it lacks constituents necessary to make it a complete sentence, but these constituents are semantically neutral. There are no other proverbs exactly parallel to the foregoing one in the F-Corpus, but one other item No faith with heretics is similar: it is elliptical due to lacking a verbal element. While the addition of there is alone fails to reflect the imperative force of this proverb, be there or let there be captures this force. The material added is semantically neutral in the context of the proverb: Be there no faith with heretics or Let there be no faith with heretics differs from There is no faith with heretics only in the mood each sentence type is associated with. As in the case of Fast bind, fast find and its variants, imperative mood forces a paraphrase with lexical choices not quite neutral in absolute terms (assuming of course that declarative is the unmarked mood, which is not necessary). Given that the syntactic structure of the paraphrase (variants) is (12), again letting IMP indicate imperative mood, there) (VP(V be) ( N P(NP no faith) (PP with heretics)))) then (13) can serve as the basis for the compositional semantic interpretation of the proverb. (12)

(S I M P ( n p

90

4 Literal proverb

meaning

(13)

( s ΙΜΡ(ΝρΔ) ( νΡ ( ν Δ) (Np(Np no faith) (PP with heretics)))) Another F-Corpus proverb elliptical in lacking a verbal element and imperative in force is The father to the bough, the son to the plough. The preposition to suggests motion, which can be rendered in English most neutrally by go. So the proverb can be paraphrased as Let the father go to the bough and the son go to the plough. On this model, the proverb can be assigned the structure (14), which suffices as input for compositional semantic interpretation. (14) (S IMP( Si ( np the father) (VP Δ to the bough)) (CNJA) ( S ( N P the son) (Vp Δ to the plough))) This proverb also illustrates a special type of metonymy from bough to 'hanging' and from plough to 'farm work' in its SPI which I discuss in § 5.4.1. Two further proverbs from the F-Corpus of roughly this same type are Not too fast for [fear of\ falling and its variant Not too fast for breaking your shins. Like No faith with heretics, these proverbs are imperative by virtue of the initial negative particle (and your in the second example) as well as elliptical in lacking a main verb. The adverb fast along with the implied danger of falling or breaking one's shins suggest a verb (phrase) of locomotion: again go is the most neutral choice in English. This corresponds to the paraphrases Do not go too fast for falling (breaking your shins. Since these paraphrases of the proverb variants include all and only their own constituents and material semantically neutral in the given context, the variants count äs radically elliptical on the definition adopted here. They can be assigned interpretable structures based on those of the paraphrases, for the former (15): (1*5) ( S Ι Μ Ρ ( Ν Ρ Δ ) ( Ν Ρ ( Ν Δ ) (AD not too fast (PP for falling)))) Several proverbs in the F-Corpus are ungrammatical in containing an adjectival rather than a true NP as their subject, viz. Far behind must follow the faster, False with one can be false with two, Fast and loose is no possession and Fair and softly goes far. But the addition of he who is or that which is yields grammatically acceptable, compositionally interpretable 2

4.2 Ungrammatical proverbs

91

paraphrases for all four examples, e.g. He who is far behind must follow the faster (one) for the first.8 And this paraphrase leads to (16) as an interpretable structure for the proverb (cf. (5) — (6) above), where Μ stands for modal verb. (16)

far behind)) (VP(M must) ( v follow) ( NP the faster))) Fair and softly goes far, the fourth proverb of this type listed above, causes additional problems due to the adverb softly in its compound subject adjectival. Extrapolating from the previous example, this proverb can be paraphrased as That which is fair and done softly goes far. Do in the participle form done represents the most neutral English verb consistent with the proverb context, so the whole paraphrase contains all and only the constituents of the proverb itself and semantically neutral material. This is in keeping with the conditions on radical ellipsis set forth above. On the basis of the structure of the paraphrase (17), (17) (S(NP(N that) (ST which is fair and done softly)) (VP go far)) one can work out (18) as the compositionally interpretable structure of the proverb itself. (18) ( S ( N P ( N A ) (S,AA fair and Δ softly)) (VP go far)) The foregoing discussion covers all the examples of radical ellipsis in the F-Corpus and all the basic types to be found anywhere in the ODEP. Of the 141 proverbs in the F-Corpus, a total of 18 (or 13%) are radically elliptical. But the class of radically elliptical proverbs hardly exhausts the class of ungrammatical proverbs. Proverbs may also be ungrammatical by virtue of adhering to proverb formulas (see § 4.2.2) or of containing archaic or lectal syntax or lexis (see § 4.2.3). I now turn to these two classes of ungrammatical proverbs. (S(NP(NA) ( S , A A

8. I add one in parentheses to show that the proverb might also be considered elliptical (but not radically) on this account. But since this type of ellipsis is unproblematic, at least for present purposes, I have not (and will not) treat it directly, and hence ignore it in the syntactic structure proposed. So Fair words and foul play cheat both young and old and similar proverbs from the F-Corpus are not discussed as elliptical here (at least not radically).

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4 Literal proverb meaning

4.2.2 Formulaic proverbs Recall now the example proverb Like father, like son analyzed in § 4.2 as (3): (3)

(NP(NP A

N )

(

N P

A

N))

This proverb does not count as radically elliptical, because one cannot correctly paraphrase it by adding only semantically neutral constituents to it. Thus neither If it is like father, then it is like son nor That which is like father is like son, but rather something such as Son is like father or Father and son are alike paraphrases this proverb. Neither of these latter meets the conditions set out above for examples of radical ellipsis. In particular neither contains all the constituents which appear in the proverb surface structure. So we must find some other way of treating this proverb. Notice first that Like father, like son instances a standard proverb formula, a notion introduced in §3.1.1.2. One other item in the F-Corpus has the same form: Like fault, like punishment, but many further examples may be found in the ODEP, e. g. Like master, like man; Like priest, like people; Like cow, like calf. Since such examples cannot be treated as cases of radical ellipsis, I propose to make their semantic interpretation dependent on a special statement associated with the like X like Y formula, viz. to interpret it as 'X and Y are alike'. In this way, proverbs adhering to recurrent proverb formulas can be characterized as ungrammatical by normal standards, but still assigned readings. If there are several such proverb formulas with special rules for their semantic interpretation, it seems natural to place them together in a separate part of the regular grammar of English or in a distinct grammar altogether. Quirk et al. (1972: 411 ff.) reserve a section of their monumental English grammar for proverb formulas and similar utterance templates. This suggestion also parallels a proposal by van Dijk (1972: 249) of a literary lexicon, in which special literary figures would be listed. Certain figures ungrammatical in the regular grammar can thereby be characterized as conditionally or literarily standard

4.2 Ungrammatical proverbs

93

or acceptable. Since this special grammar will ultimately cover not only formulas proper but also recurrent archaic and lectal constructions (see §4.2.3), I propose to call it the proverbial grammar (p-grammar) for the balance of this study. Structures defined in the p-grammar but not well-formed according to the regular grammar, whether they are actual inventorized proverbs or proverb-like constructions, perhaps freely formed on the model of proverb structures, will then be labeled proverbially grammatical (p-grammatical). The frequency of a relatively small number of proverb formulas (and other predominantly proverbial structures) in English speaks in favor of such a p-grammar. Within the FCorpus only two proverb formulas appear besides the already discussed like X like Y, but they account for four total items each in the F-Corpus. The first of them takes the basic form the X-er the Y-er. The four items adhering to it are: The fairer the hostess, the fouler the reckoning; The fairer the paper, the fouler the blot; The farther in, the deeper; The farther the sight, the nearer the rain. The second formula takes the form X and Y; the relevant examples are: Fair and sluttish, black and proud, long and lazy, little and loud and its variant Fair and foolish, black and proud, long and lazy, little and loud; Fair in the cradle and foul in the saddle and its converse Foul in the cradle and fair in the saddle. A marginal case of this formula A fair shop and little gain will also be analyzed. This yields a total eleven formulaic proverbs in the F-Corpus or nearly 8 % of its 141 proverbs. Consider first the formula the X-er the Y-er. The unavailability of any grammatical structure of this form in standard grammars of English, or at least of any indication of how it should be interpreted semantically (cf. Quirk et al. 1972: 411 ff.), dooms to failure an analysis along the lines of elliptical paraphrase as described in §4.2.1. Instead the p-grammar must include the formula along with a statement about its interpretation. The appropriate instruction should read: Interpret the X-er the Y-er as Ύ is directly proportional to X'. This instruction asserts a paraphrase relation between The fairer the hostess, the fouler the reckoning and Foulness in the reckoning is directly proportional to fairness in the hostess.

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4 Literal proverb meaning

As this example demonstrates, certain syntactic adjustments must be made on the way from the proverb to the paraphrase; but semantic rather than syntactic compatibility is here at stake. I am not claiming that the proverb can be transformed into the given paraphrase in any direct, mechanical fashion, but only that the former can be semantically interpreted just as the latter. The instruction for semantic interpretation is just that; it involves no syntactic claim. The farther in, the deeper is even more problematic from a syntactic point of view. Here we must imagine a paraphrase something like: How deep a thing is in is directly proportional to how far it is in. But these difficulties pertain only to syntactic properties of the example in question, rather than to the semantic analysis as such, so they need not trouble us here. Nevertheless, the irregular applicability of whatever rules to proverbs adhering to the same formula or exhibiting otherwise similar structures points in the direction of interpretive statements applying to increasingly restricted sets of proverbs, perhaps ultimately to single proverbs. I shall have more to say on this matter below. The X and Y formula connects two adjectivals as in Fair and sluttish, black and proud, long and lazy, little and loud and is associated with a reading like 'fairness implies sluttishness' etc. Proverbs adhering to the formula are ungrammatical in having adjectivals instead of nominals as subjects and in lacking any verbal element. So the instruction for their interpretation must supply both nominalization and verbs, say: Interpret X and Y as 'X-ness implies Y-ness'. For the example Fair in the cradle and foul in the saddle and its converse this instruction yields 'fairness in the cradle implies foulness in the saddle' and its converse. Note that this instruction is clearly semantic rather than syntactic in nature: it does more than merely regularize the structure for input to normal semantic principles; it provides a partial interpretation itself. While the 'X-ness implies Y-ness' interpretation is standard for the X and Y formula when X and Y are adjectivals, other interpretations arise when X and Y are nominals. One proverb in the F-Corpus adheres to the nominal X and Y formula, viz. A fair shop and little gain. The literal reading for this proverb is 'one should have a fair shop and little gain'; certainly 'a fair

4.2 Ungrammatical proverbs

95

shop implies little gain' is not the correct interpretation. So we have here a single proverb formula with conflicting interpretations, depending on the syntactic category of the elements filling its slots. Since the two cases differ syntactically, they can be differentiated and separately treated in the pgrammar. That this is not an isolated occurrence can be seen from the following example, taken this time from outside the F-Corpus. Consider the examples So got, so gone and So far, so good. The structure so X so Y is ungrammatical with respect to the regular grammar, and it cannot be paraphrased in such a way as to allow treatment as a case of radical ellipsis. Thus while, say, Soon gotten, soon spent can be paraphrased as That which is soon gotten is soon spent and hence considered radically elliptical, the paraphrase That which is so got is so gone remains just as ill-formed as the unexpanded proverb, due to the construction so ... so. There is then no alternative to handling the formula so X so Y in the p-grammar. The instruction for its semantic interpretation will read: Interpret so X so Y as 'a thing is Y as it is X'. This instruction gives the right result for So got, so gone with its participles, but it fails for So far, so good with its lexical adjectives and an interpretation like 'everything is Y so X'. Again we have a proverb formula with conflicting interpretations coupled with different syntactic fillers for its slots. This syntactic difference allows distinctive treatment for the two interpretations in the p-grammar. Consequently, even if one limits the p-grammar to recurrent formulas, one may end up treating individual proverbs which share a single formula but fill its slots differently. However, the p-grammar must include formulas of narrow occurrence and formulaic proverbs with unique interpretations in any case, since these too can be syntactically manipulated and used as templates for freely formed utterances. This points in the direction of more narrowly defined formulas with more highly restricted slots. But we can still close the p-grammar to anything but formulas, thereby excluding proverbs which do not adhere to some formula at least syntactically. This would entail listing

96

4 Literal proverb meaning

entire literal readings for such irregular proverbs in addition to their SPIs in the proverb inventory (cf. §6.1.1). It has been usual at least since Bloomfield (1933: esp. 269) to inventorize exceptions and reserve the grammar for productive patterns, and there is no reason why the p-grammar should abandon this principle. So the p-grammar will treat only cases with some claim to regularity/productivity. This concludes my discussion of ungrammatically in proverbs not due to archaism or other lectal features, matters to which we now turn.

4.2.3 Archaic and lectal proverbs By archaic proverbs I mean proverbs containing archaic structures or lexical items. By lectal proverbs I mean proverbs containing dialectal, sociolectal etc. structures or lexical items. Archaic and lectal proverbs count as ungrammatical in a given linguistic community for the same reason: they conform at least in part to conventions different from those in force in it. Archaic proverbs form a special subset of all lectal proverbs, in that they conform to conventions of a lect historically related to the one in which they occur. Thence I treat both archaic and otherwise lectal proverbs as a single group, using the term lectal proverb in the following to include archaic proverbs. Of the total 141 F-Corpus proverbs 19 (or about 13 %) are lectal proverbs: they must be considered ungrammatical in the strict sense of containing structures or lexical items not defined by present-day standard English grammar. These lectally ungrammatical proverbs naturally fall into two groups: those with lectal lexis (§4.2.3.1), and those with lectal syntactic structures (§ 4.2.3.2).

4.2.3.1 Lectal lexis The following seven items, or 5 % of the F-Corpus, contain words not to be found in Webster's New World Dictionary

4.2 Ungrammatical proverbs

97

(Second College Edition, 1976) with the forms and/or the meanings which occur in the proverbs. The words are also footnoted and defined in the ODEP, whence I deduce the glosses offered in each case. Fair chieve all where love trucks (fair chieve = 'do well'; truck = 'reign'); Fair chieve good ale, it makes many folks speak as they think (fair chieve = 'do well'); There never was a fair word in flyting (flyting = 'scolding'); Fair words will not make the pot play (play = 'boil'); Fancy may bolt bran and think it flour (bolt = 'sift'); The father buys, the son bigs, the grandchild sells, and his son thigs (big = 'build'; thig = 'beg'); To fazarts hard hazards are death ere they come there (fazart = 'coward'). If each of these proverbs is listed along with its literal reading in the inventory (cf. § 6.1.1), as proposed in the previous section for otherwise irregularly ungrammatical examples, then the lectal meanings of the crucial words emerge from these readings and the proverbs themselves are characterized as ungrammatical due to lectal lexis.

4.2.3.2 Lectal syntax The other twelve lectal proverbs in the F-Corpus, or about 8 % of its 141 proverbs, contain syntactic structures not standard in the grammar of present-day English. This group can be subdivided according to the type of non-standard construction. The first subgroup consists of those items with the lectal (archaic) order Verb + not instead of the standard modern do + not + Verb. The examples from the F-Corpus are: Expect not fair weather in winter on one night's ice; Fair words fill not the belly; Fair words hurt not the mouth; Fair words hurt not the tongue; Fall not out with a friendfor a trifle. Given its frequency, this syntactic structure can be treated as formulaic and included in the p-grammar, thus rendering the five proverbs just listed pgrammatical. An instruction for its interpretation like: Interpret Verb + not as 'do not Verb' relates the structure to the standard grammatical order of constituents, so that each whole proverb can be treated as a regular compositional construction. This entails that certain lectal constructions are accepted as standard in proverbial contexts, a conclusion I consider correct.

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4 Literal proverb

meaning

The second most frequent type of lectal ungrammaticality in the F-Corpus involves the relative pronoun who as the initial constituent in a sentence in lieu of he who, and in violation of standard grammatical constraints in Modern English. E. g. Who has a fair wife needs more than two eyes; Who fasts and does no other good spares his bread and goes to hell; Who is in fault suspects everybody; Who is quilty suspects everybody. Again this construction seems common enough in proverbs to count as pgrammatical, so it should also be handled in the p-grammar. As in the preceding case, a simple instruction relates sentenceinitial who to the standard grammatical he who. A third type of lectal ungrammaticality results from the use of the pronoun thou and its inflected forms. One instance from the F-Corpus was mentioned in § 4.2.1 as an example of radical ellipsis: Far from home, near thy harm. Also Thou and its inflected forms are perhaps common enough in proverbs (and in ecclesiastical English) to be treated in our p-grammar, thus rendering constructions containing them p-grammatical. Their treatment in the p-grammar involves more than simply relating two structures, as in the two previous examples. It must include not only the paradigm for the declension of thou, but also the morphemes required for agreement with thou in the conjugation of verbs. A further type of lectal ungrammaticality found in the FCorpus appears in To a fair day open the window, but make you ready as to a foul, where you has reflexive function without the standard reflexive form yourself In the same way, him might appear for himself, her for herself and so on. This construction is considerably less frequent in the ODEP overall than occurrences of thou and its inflected forms, although both turn up only once in the F-Corpus. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to relate it to the standard reflexive construction in the pgrammar. The final example of lectal ungrammaticality from the FCorpus has no claim to pattern or regularity of any kind. It occurs only once in the entire ODEP, viz. in the F-Corpus proverb He that falls into the dirt, the longer he stays there the fouler he is. In standard grammatical form this proverb might read: He that falls into the dirt gets fouler the longer he stays

4.3 Summary

99

there. But since this type of ungrammaticality is irregular, the proverb will simply appear in the inventory with the proposed standard paraphrase as its literal reading, and no relation between the two will be included in the p-grammar (cf. § 6.1.1 below). This takes care of all the ungrammatical proverbs in the FCorpus of the ODEP. They demonstrate most of the types of ungrammatical proverbs in the entire ODEP, and all the procedures needed to handle any of them.

4.3 Summary The main conclusions of this chapter are as follows. First, the determination of literal readings for (ungrammatical) proverbs occurs independently of and as a prerequisite to their classification as literal or figurative, and their classification within the realm of figurative proverbs. Second, some ungrammatical proverbs can be handled as cases of radical ellipsis, as structures derived by an overextension of regular grammatical operations. Compositional semantic readings are derived for these proverbs by relating their structures to those of grammatically complete paraphrases of them. Third, other ungrammatical proverbs resist analysis as radically elliptical constructions, but adhere to recurrent proverb formulas. They can be treated in a special p-grammar including the relevant formulas and instructions for their semantic interpretation. The p-grammar will assign interpretation instructions to at least the following formulas: like X like Y; the X-er the Y-er; X and Y; so X so Y. Fourth, proverbs ungrammatical due to recurrent lectal constructions can be related to standard grammatical structures in the p-grammar as well. They count as p-grammatical along with those adhering to formulas. The relevant constructions are: Verb + not instead of do + not + Verb; sentence initial

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4 Literal proverb meaning

who instead of he who; those involving thou, its inflected forms and verbal agreement morphemes; and object case you, him etc. as reflexives instead of yourself, himself etc. Fifth, proverbs ungrammatical due to idiosyncratic (lectal or otherwise) constructions or lectal lexical items must appear along with their literal readings in the proverb inventory. They do not receive treatment in the p-grammar and do not count as p-grammatical. Sixth, statistically 29 ( = 20 %) of the F-Corpus proverbs do not adhere to standard NP + VP structure, while another 19 (or nearly 13%) are lectally ungrammatical, i.e. they contain lectal/archaic lexis or syntax. All told then 48 (or almost 34 %) of the 141 F-Corpus proverbs are ungrammatical by the standards of contemporary English. And this fact certainly justifies a chapter dedicated to literal proverb meaning in a study of how proverbs mean.

Chapter 5 Figurative proverb meaning

5.0 Introduction While scholars since Aristotle (Rhetoric III, xi, 14) have associated the proverb with figurative meaning, no one has attempted to define or catalogue the types of figures proverbs commonly contain. This is all the more surprising because some paremiologists, including e. g. Greimas (1970: 309 ff.) and Barley (1972: 741) and (1974 a: 881), cite figurative meaning as a defining characteristic of the proverb; cf. 3.1.6.2 above. But the identification of standard types öf proverbial figures bears interest not only in and of itself nor as a definitional criterion: it could provide the basis for a notion of natural figurative meaning versus irregular and idiosyncratic types in poetic theory (cf. Norrick 1981 b: 225); and it could lead to hypotheses about recurrent patterns of thought in the realm of cognitive psychology.9 Since proverbs seem to exhibit parallel types of figures in all cultures (see e.g. Kuusi 1957 and Dölker 1973), they provide a valuable source of data in the fields mentioned. My own interest in regular meaning relationships led me to study proverbial figures, and the catalogue of standard types of figures to be elaborated below represents one of the primary goals of this study.

9. In fact, proverbs have been used in empirical psychological research at least since Bühler (1908): see Honeck et al. (1980) for this and further references, and Ortony et al. (1979) for empirical work on metaphor generally.

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5 Figurative proverb meaning

Before proceeding to concrete examples from the corpus, a review of the literature pertaining to proverbial figures is in order.

5.1 Research on proverbial figures Seiler (1922: 4) mentions as examples of proverbial figures metaphor and personification, then goes on to recognize (1922: 7) varying degrees of metaphoric meaning. He distinguishes (1) completely metaphorical proverbs describing a concrete scene meant to be understood as illustrating a general truth from (2) examples in which only a single noun or verb phrase has metaphoric meaning. Many scholars have accepted or asserted that the completely metaphorical proverb describing a concrete scene, call it the scenic proverb, represents the archetypal proverb (e. g. Röhrich 1967: 51; Müller-Schwefe 1972: 342; Barley 1972), perhaps because this turns out to be the most frequent statistical type of figurative proverb, as we shall see below. The most complete analysis of this proverbial figure to date is found in Barley (1972), but this treatment depends upon Seitel (1969) and Maranda (1971) in crucial ways, so that I comment on these last two first.

5.1.1 Seitel (1969) Seitel (1969) provides a model of the generalization of the concrete scene described in a proverb to the social situation relevant to a speaker and his hearer. Of central importance here is the relation Seitel sees between the proverbial scene or image, say that between the leopard and his spots in the proverb The leopard cannot change his spots to borrow Barley's (1972) later example, and the social situation in which a speaker wishes to convince his hearer that some convicted thief is incapable of

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•

figures

103

Β imaginary (proverb) 1 social (real world)

II

D Figure 3

ever reforming. In Figure 3, adapted from Seitel (1969: 147), A and Β are the concepts related to each other in the proverb, here the leopard and his spots. The sign ~ represents their relation. C and D stand for objects or people in the real world which are seen as t being related in a manner similar to the concepts in the proverb, in our example the thief and his criminality. The similarity between the two relations marked by the two signs ~ is shown by the dashed lines. Seitel abbreviates the analogy postulated in Figure 3 as A:B::C:D. Two facts should be noted about Seitel's model. First, it represents the situative use of the proverb rather than its internal semantics; Seitel (1969) was primarily concerned with social functions of proverbs. Second, while the model functions for essentially any binary proverb, it works best for wholly metaphorical proverbs describing complete scenes to be interpreted as general truths, scenic proverbs as defined in the preceding section. Of course, the model could be easily expanded to accomodate relations involving three or more terms, but it presupposes binary structure as it stands.

5.1.2 Maranda (1971) Maranda (1971) sets up a model for the metaphorical structure of the riddle which ends up looking much like that Seitel proposes for proverbs. Maranda begins with the standard formula for analogy A/B = C/D, which is simply a notational variant of Seitel's abbreviated formula A:B::C:D. For Maranda

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5 Figurative proverb meaning

A — D are the terms of a riddle, one of which is to be guessed, rather than the terms of a proverb image and those in a social situation, as for Seitel. But as Georges and Dundes (1963) show, the two sets of terms in a riddle are in fact related as the terms in a proverb relate to its interpretation in the concrete situation.10 We shall see shortly that Barley (1972, 1974 b) too employs the same model for both riddles and proverbs. So the isomorphism of the two formulas is far from fortuitous. Maranda (1971:194) expands the above formula as Figure 4. ANALOGY METAPHOR

METONYMY

ι

1

r A

C

A / L Β

/ D

Figure 4

For the Finnish riddle: One pig, two snouts from which the traditional Finnish fork plough must be guessed, this model works as follows. A stands for the pig and Β for his snout; D stands for the two snouts and C for the thing to be guessed. Following Jakobson (1954), Maranda identifies the contiguous relation between a pig and his snout as one of metonymy, just as that between the plough and its two snouts is. This leads to a metaphoric relation of similarity between the two sets of terms, thus allowing a hearer to guess the term C. By parallel reasoning, the relation between the leopard and his spots is also a contiguous, metonymic one. The peculiar genius of the proverb consists in the fact that it can be used to assert that the relation between a thief and his criminality is contiguous in a manner analogous to that between the leopard and his spots. This fact about the proverb can be captured in either of the models presented so far, although Maranda's model was constructed for the riddle. 10. As it turns out, the two genres generally differ quite fundamentally in figurative type: see § 5.7. '

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5.1.3 Barley (1972) Barley (1972; cf. 1974 b) adapts and expands Maranda's (1971) model for the proverb. Barley (1972: 739) points out that the proverb, unlike the riddle, can be understood and even paraphrased without knowledge of its context or of the objects to which it applies (like the term to be guessed in the riddle). He consequently distinguishes between the external relations a proverb contracts to its context of use and the internal, logical relations between the terms of the proverb themselves, totally independently of any concrete contextual use, in his example the relation between the leopard and his spots qua relation. The analogy between the proverb image and the concrete social situation is then not drawn directly as Seitel and Maranda claim, but rather indirectly by way of the generalized logical relation expressed concretely in the proverb. So Barley would replace or at least amplify Figures 3 and 4 by Figure 5. general (maxim level)

situation |

situation 2

( i n proverb )

( i n context)

Figure 5

Barley identifies the level of generalization as the maxim level, because any metaphorical proverb can be paraphrased by a literal maxim. Thus for The leopard cannot change his spots, Barley suggests the maxim Once a thief always a thief. Barley calls the generalized idea extracted from a metaphorical proverb its structural description. One derives a structural description for a proverb by moving up the classificational tree (of semantic features a la Katz and Fodor 1963) for each term in it to arrive at more general terms; see Figures 6 und 7 in § 5.2.1 below. If leopard is classified as animate, animal, feline etc., one erases specific features up to the level of animate.

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5 Figurative proverb meaning

The spots intended in the proverb will be characterized as natural, marking, blotch, small, contrastive color etc., and all these features can be erased up to natural. This process yields a generalized reading like 'animate beings cannot change their natural characteristics'. More or less formalized rules for the derivation of these, call them species to genus synecdochic interpretations, are proposed by Leech (1969 a, 1969 b), van Dijk (1972), Levin (1977) and Norrick (1981 b); they come in for additional discussion in the following sections. The inadequacy of the semantic feature approach becomes evident when one tries to generalize the meaning of a proverb like The early bird catches the worm. Simple semantic decomposition of bird and worm fails to reveal their relationship, so generalization can yield at best 'the early agent gets the animate object', but not the SPI 'the early agent gets the needed object'. Either the semantic representation of bird or that of worm must say that worms regularly serve as food for birds, and 'food' then generalizes to 'needed object'. It is not part of the usual semantic feature definition of worm to be bird food, but it is part of the definition of food that it is needed as bodily sustenance. The frame semantic approach outlined below offers semantic representations of the kind required.

5.1.4 Zolkovsky (1978) Zolkovsky (1978) recognizes relations of the kind just sketched, although he reverses the direction of the analysis. That is, he works from the generalized idea to the concrete image in the proverb. He views proverbs as concrete statements of general semiotic relations between things. These relations can be stated independently of any particular corpus of proverbs. The actual proverb surface structures are derived from the general ideas by so-called Expressiveness Devices, one of which, viz. Concretization, in effect mirrors the abstraction process outlined above. Thus by Concretization, 'animate being' can become leopard and 'natural characteristic' can become spots. Of course, Concretization might just as easily lead to a proverb like The camel cannot change his hump, but that does not affect the point

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being made (cf. Kuusi 1972 for a critical appraisal of this type of approach).

5.1.5 Summary and consequences To review briefly, four differently conceived analyses with different goals all suggest a single picture of the relationship between the proverb image and its general idea, or SPI: the image is a concrete description of a specific scene which can be generalized to yield an abstract truth. This figure has traditionally been called a synecdoche from species to genus (cf. Quintilian Institutio oratoria VIII vi 19; Wackernagel 1906: 518ff.; Burke 1945: 507-508; Lausberg 1960: 296; Dubois et al. 1970: 102; Sapir 1977: 1 4 - 1 7 among many others); Burke (1945) stresses the analogy of the microcosm standing for the macrocosm. Of course the species to genus {species-genus hereafter) synecdochic relation from the literal reading to the SPI holds strictly only for wholly figurative proverbs describing complete concrete scenes or microcosms. But this basic proverbial figure has often been viewed as the archetypal, unmarked case for proverbs; it furthermore turns out to be the statistically most frequent type in my corpus (see § 5.2). So complete scenic, species-genus synecdochic proverbs provide an appropriate starting point for an exploration of proverbial figures generally. The traditional semantic feature approach cannot always account for the generalization of meaning found in scenic species-genus synecdochic proverbs, as seen in § 5.1.3; we need a mode of semantic representation that goes beyond mere decomposition of word meaning to capture potential relationships between the concepts a proverb expresses. The frame theory of semantics presented in Rumelhart & Ortony (1977; cf. Minsky 1975) and applied in Ortony (1979 a, 1979 b) provides the necessary device in the form of schemata. The semantic representation for a word consists of a set of schemata; "a schema may contain tokens of... other schemata. Such schemata can be viewed as representing predicates or attributes of the schemata they dominate or by which they are dominated"

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5 Figurative proverb meaning

(Ortony 1979 a: 162). And these predicates or attributes can range far beyond the type of information contained in a standard semantic decomposition. Thus the semantic representation for worm will include not only predicates like Ms round' and 'is long', which would appear in a traditional feature representation, but also 'eats dirt' and 'is food for birds', which would not. The relative salience of a predicate in a schema varies with context. So the predicate 'is food for birds' achieves special salience in the context of The early bird catches the worm. With this enrichment of the semantic representation for worm, the whole proverb generalizes naturally to 'the early agent gets the needed object', which amounts to the SPI for the proverb; the analysis is detailed in § 5.2.1 (1) just below. No comprehensive review of research on types of figures can be offered here. The distinctions drawn and the types of figures recognized will be just those found in the proverbs of the corpus under investigation. I shall content myself with drawing parallels to the literature as it becomes relevant in the discussion of particular proverbs from the corpus. On the basis of the foregoing chapter (§4.1), a figurative proverb is by definition one whose literal reading, even when due to the p-grammar or the proverb inventory, differs from its SPI. On the basis of traditional rhetorical categories, a figurative proverb is species-genus synecdochic when its literal reading and its SPI or parts of them stand in a relation of microcosm to macrocosm; it is metaphoric when its literal reading and its SPI or parts of them stand in a relation of similarity; and it is metonymic when its literal reading and its SPI or parts of them stand in a relation of contiguity. These characterizations are of course not sufficient in and of themselves, but the rest of this chapter amounts to an extensional definition of synecdochic, metaphoric and metonymic proverb meaning, in that it enumerates all the individual subtypes and examples of each from the F-Corpus, as well as defining further types of figures belonging to none of these three categories. As a basic analytical principle I interpret word meanings as broadly as possible consistent with current usage and lexica. Thus I do not count as figurative fat in the F-Corpus proverb

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On fat land grow foulest weeds, since one of the definitions Webster's New World Dictionary (Second College Edition, 1976) offers for fat is 'prosperous' and English has a tradition of phrases like The fat of the land, Fat city, Fat cat etc. This argues for a literal treatment of fat in this and similar proverbs, even if the meaning in question is rather marginal in other contexts. Consistent adherence to this principle should result in fewer total figures than a more conservative attitude toward lexical meaning might yield. To maintain consistency in the following presentation I consider only one meaning (i.e. SPI) of any proverb at a time, namely only that corresponding to the figure at issue in each case. This is necessary because many proverbs have complementary or parallel SPIs. The cross-references given should facilitate access to discussions of these other SPIs and to the figures they correspond to. After a treatment of synecdoche in § 5.2,1 turn to metaphor in § 5.3 and metonymy in § 5.4. Then I discuss hyperbole in § 5.5 and paradox in § 5.6. In § 5.7 I present the complete classification of all the proverbs in the F-Corpus and draw conclusions pertaining to the chapter as a whole.

5.2 Synecdochic proverbs Turning to the F-Corpus of 200 items from the ODEP, of which 141 count as proverbs on the definition accepted in chapter 3, a total of 21 proverbs describe in their literal readings a complete concrete scene generalizable as something close to their SPI. Their literal readings and their SPIs stand in the relation of a species to its genus or that of a microcosm to the corresponding macrocosm, which Burke (1945: 507 ff.) considers the fundamental synecdochic relation. Another ten proverbs describe incomplete but generalizable concrete scenes for a total of 31 species-genus synecdochic proverbs in the F-Corpus.

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5 Figurative proverb meaning

We shall look at individual examples of this figure in the coming section; but notice first that the count of 31 examples makes species-genus synecdoche the largest figurative class in the F-Corpus. In fact, the 31 cases make up about 22 % of all the proverbs in the corpus, but 37 % of the 84 figurative proverbs. In the ODEP as a whole with 6591 proverbs on my definition, 1943 or 29 % are species-genus synecdochic and this corresponds to almost 62 % of the total 3158 figurative proverbs. So it is no wonder that proverbs containing species-genus synecdoches have often been treated as archetypal or genuine to the exclusion of other proverbs, as noted above, or that other proverbs have been ignored in studies of proverbial figures.

5.2.1 Scenic species-genus synecdoche This section begins with a consideration of four examples to illustrate my assignment of readings and figurative classifications to proverbs. Then I summarize the principles of classification leading to the complete lists of synecdochic proverbs and all other figurative types from the F-Corpus in § 5.7. (1) Consider again The early bird catches the worm. This proverb meets the criteria for species-genus synecdoche outlined above. First, on the literal level it describes a concrete scene, in particular one involving a bird and a worm. Second, this literal reading differs from its SPI 'the early agent gets the needed object'. Third, this SPI can be derived from the literal reading by generalization given a semantic representation for worm which includes its status as food for birds. A semantic representation for worm in the Rumelhart & Ortony (1977) framework will include a predicate like 'is food for birds', and this predicate gains high salience in the present avian context. So the proverb is understood to mean 'the early bird gets the food', which in turn generalizes to 'the early agent gets the needed object'. This relation from a concrete scene to a general statement correlates not only with traditional rhetorical speciesgenus synecdoche, but also with Burke's (1945: 507 ff.) microcosm-macrocosm relation, as sketched above.

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111

The meaning relation between the concrete literal reading and the SPI for The early bird catches the worm can be represented graphically as in Figure 6, where the major lexical items of the proverb are associated with the predicates in single quotes to their right. Food replaces worm as its most salient attribute in the context of birds. The generalization process abstracts away from the more concrete/specific predicates (indicated by 0 ) in each set to yield the meaning approximated the

the

early

early is an object' agent

'is animate' bird 0 lays eggs'

-»J0

gets catches 'find

x'

->0

the 'is an objert' the

'is sustenance'

food

-»0

0 is swallowed'

Figure 6

needed

is needed'

object

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5 Figurative proverb

meaning

by the italicized words of the SPI to their right. I use agent to stand for subject nominals characterized as 'is an object' and 'is animate'. So schematically the meaning relation between the literal reading and the SPI of a proverb here classified as species-genus synecdochic will be as in Figure 7, where pi, p2 ... pn stand for predicates.

p

Λ ι C

00 00 "!7S ca