[Lingtyp] Metaphorical subject-object order in proverbs with parallel sentences

Sun Jun 20 08:36:25 UTC 2021

Dear all,

thank you for your insightful comments. It is pleasant to know that this is a highly variable factor across different languages in the world. It might be interesting to do an overall survey to see if there are any areal patterns.

Regards,
Ian
On 20 Jun 2021, 11:02 AM +0800, MM Jocelyne Fernandez <mmjocelynefern at gmail.com>, wrote:

Dear All,

Studying at different periods parallelism in oral tradition, I would like to quote a few examples from a special corpus of Balto-Finnic proverbs originally collected by Matti Kuusi, They show that, in the same Cirumbaltic area, parallelism is a constant feature of proverbs, but both orders source-target are found, with variants between neighboring languages as well as within one and the same language.

Finnish

Jos on tiassä tilaa, kyl on virsuskin varaa

“If there is on the road enough space, yes there is in the birch-bark shoe room too”

Carelian

Jos on vartta viršuššaki, onpa šuollaki šijoa

“If there is room in the birch-bark shoe too, there is indeed space enough on the road too”.

Besides a reversed order, a clear variable is the degree of dialogical style, Finnish proverbs using more Discourse Particles:

Votic

Kuza tetšijäd, siäl nätšijäD

“Where actor, there witness”

Finnish

Kyl siin on näkijä kun tekijäki

« Yes there is witness when actor too”

Finally, this “source-target” relation illustrates a problem of Information structuring: even in the formalized style of paremiological genre, the rhematic clause can precede the thematic one, as if often the case of conditional and comparative clauses in ordinary language.

SOURCES:

• Kuusi Matti (ed.), 1985, Proverbia Septentrionalia, Balto-Finnic Proverb Types with Russian, Baltic, German and Scandinavian Parallels, Helsinki, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, FFC Communications, 236.

• Fernandez-Vest M.M.Jocelyne, 1994, Les particules énonciatives dans la construction du discours (Proverbe et dialogue, 34-44), Paris, PUF, Linguistique nouvelle.

• Fernandez-Vest, M.M.Jocelyne, 2015, Detachments for Cohesion. Toward an information grammar of oral languages, Berlin/Munich/Boston, De Gruyter Mouton (EALT 56).

Best

Le 19/06/2021 à 13:00, paolo Ramat a écrit :
Dear All,
I wouldn't like to enlarge the discussion to topics which are similar to the debated question here (as it often happens in the linguistlist !). However, the two nice examples from the  Hitopadeśa quoted by Siva Kalyan seem very similar to the rhetorical figure called 'similitudo' (Engl. simile), much used by poets from Homer on. Cp. Milton's Paradise Lost, where the source domain  (the Wolf) precedes the target domain (the grand Thief): precisely as 'tiger' and 'water'  precede  'person' and 'heart' in the Korean proverbs .
As when a prowling Wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
. . . . . . .
So clomb this first grand Thief into God's Fold

Vergil and Dante are plenty of metaphorical similes introduced by sicut X, ita Y and,respectively, come X, così/similemente  Y (as X, so /similarly Y) Cp. Parad. 23, 1-10 etc.

Best,
Paolo

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Il giorno ven 18 giu 2021 alle ore 18:51 David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>> ha scritto:

Dear all,

Two well-known poetic forms which place the source before the target (like Korean) are:

1. The Malay pantun — a ubiquitous quatrain form in which the first couplet presents the source while the second couplet follows with the target.

2. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

In contrast, both orders are attested in

3. Virgil's Aeneid

SOURCES
For the Malay Pantun, this feature is pervasive and almost definitional of the genre.  For brief discussion see Gil (@).  For Homer and Virgil, the source is a personal communication from Yeshayahu Shen, alluding to a PhD dissertation from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose precise reference he was unfortunately unable to provide.

Gil, David (1993) "'Il pleut doucement sur la ville':  The Rhythm of a Metaphor", Poetics Today 14:49-82.

On 18/06/2021 15:41, Siva Kalyan wrote:
At least some Sanskrit proverbs have the "metaphorical subjects" preceding the "metaphorical objects". The example that comes to mind is the following:

varam eko guṇī putro na ca mūrkhaśatair api
ekaścandrastamo hanti na ca tārāgaṇair api

“A single intelligent son is preferable to a hundred fools;
[just as] the sun is not blotted out by the multitude of stars.”

Also the following:

na daivam iti saṃcintya tyajed udyogam ātmanaḥ
anudyogena kas tailaṃ tilebhyaḥ prāptum arhati?

“Do not abandon your work, thinking it is foreordained by fate;
[for] who is capable of obtaining oil from sesame plants without effort?”

(Both of these examples are from the 12th-century text Hitopadeśa.)

In addition, all the examples of metaphorical proverbs in Tamil that I can think of also have the subject-before-object order. (I don’t remember the original, but one of them goes along the lines of, “Don’t think that only your relatives can help you; the poison that you are born with may threaten your life, but the herb that saves you may come from a distant mountain”.)

At the very least, there are probably strong areal tendencies here. I wouldn't be surprised if Sinospheric languages pattern one way, and Indospheric languages pattern the other way.

By the way, I wouldn’t recommend using “subject” and “object” to talk about metaphor, given how overloaded these terms are already. I think the standard way of talking about metaphors is in terms of “source domain” (= your “object”) and “target domain” (= your “subject”).

Siva

On 18 Jun 2021, at 2:08 pm, JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk<mailto:ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>> wrote:

Dear all,

in Korean proverbs consisting of two parallel sentences, the metaphorical object precedes the metaphorical subject:

  *   호랑이는 죽어서 가죽을 남기고, 사람은 죽어서 이름을 남긴다. A tiger leaves its hide when it dies, and a person leaves their name when they die.
  *   열 길 물 속은 알아도 한 길 사람 속은 모른다. You can see through ten feet deep water, but you cannot see through a one foot deep heart.

In these proverbs, the metaphorical objects (tiger, water) precede the metaphorical subjects (person, heart).
I have been assuming that this is the “natural” way of making a parallel comparison, until I came across Mongolian proverbs today that have the opposite structure:

  *   Хүн ёс дагана, нохой яс дагана. A person follows traditions, and a dog follows bones.
  *   Уур биеийг зовоодог, уул морийг зовоодог. The anger torments the body, and the mountain torments the horse.

I assume here that the person and the body are being compared to the dog and the horse (and not the other way around).
Is this metaphorical subject - metaphorical object order common in proverbs of other languages as well?

From Hong Kong,
Ian
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