Proverbs

[Justin McBride]

>    What about
>    the situation in Muskogean, Cherokee and Natchez?  If they are
>    equally non-proverbial, that would pretty well settle this doubt.

    I'm not sure if they fit the different proverb models that have been
sparked by this thread, but Cherokee has a number of proverb-like sayings.
They are much more like the folkway aphorisms Ardis mentioned, however, such
as "Don't leave dinner sitting out all night, it will attract _____(bad
things)" or "If a butterfly lands on something of yours, you'll get a new
one soon," and even taboos on gardening without shirts.  I've heard these
things, or things like them, from any number of folks.  But the fact that
they are rarely of a standard form between sources and not particularly
applicable to things beyond that which is directly mentioned pretty much
limits them to quippy expression of belief--or even superstition, in some
people's minds--instead of proverbs proper.
    But I'm wondering how different that is from English or other languages.
Do the not stepping on cracks or not kissing toads or not drinking coke
while eating pop rocks sayings not count as proverbial?  The whole of such a
saying--of at least the  first two 8^) --is invoked when cited in part, or
even in visual gags.  If this does fit the proverb model, then I know lots
of examples of Osage folkway "superstitions" that get referenced in similar
ways by Osages speaking English, at any rate.  As far as whether this maybe
culturally referential to the Osage world or perhaps more to the Anglo
world, I would imagine it's a little of both.
    Either way, this topic is fairly at least of some interest to
linguists--as is apparent from the volume of nodes in the thread.   I wonder
if this is symptomatic of the program of linguistics as a course of study or
tracable perhaps more to the fact that a linguist is necessarily a student
of culture.  Proving once again, you can't take the primary cultural feature
out of  the culturally persistent item inventory and expect to analyze it in
a vacuum. (If I hear this sentence once, I hear it twenty or thirty times a
day--it's probably on deck to be a proverb itself).

-jm