Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta? (in English: is a word to the wise enough?) - A multidimensional analysis.

Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta. (A word to the wise is enough) A multidimensional analysis Aline Bazenga University of Madeira, CLUL & CLEPUL

9th Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs (ICP15), Tavira, Portugal, 5th November 2015

Introduction Complexity of proverbs; requiring a “Theoretical Frame, integrating a multidimensional analysis; Portuguese proverb Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta (A word to the wise is enough) as a formulaic expression and a situated perlocutionary intertext act

What is a proverb? Some stereotypes related to Proverbs listed by Tamba (2000) •  Well known •  Traditional folklore •  Wisdom •  Old •  Truth •  “quoting the proverb…. / as the proverb says …”

What is a proverb? More elaborately stated, proverbs are short, generally known sentences of the folk that contain wisdom, truths, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed, and memorizable form and that are handed down from generation to generation. (Mieder 1996a: 597), in Mieder (2004: 3)

What is a proverb? In their use, they serve as a specific means of traditional and largely objective evaluation of behaviour, attitudes and human deeds (Norrick, 2009: 363)

What is a proverb? Usage, social norms and attitude evaluation The prescriptive, instructive nature of proverbs as a whole may and should be viewed as pragmatic since proverbs usually express traditional social norms; explicit expression of attitude evaluation such as in“Good girls go to Heaven, bad girls go everywhere; Gold can make a good man bad.”

What is a proverb? •  Tamba (2000): semiotic formulas available in every language for moral purposes, easily memorized and easy to repeat; •  Wray (2002, 2012): as a formulaic sequences •  Mieder (2004): when the proper proverb is chosen for a particular situation, it is bound to fit perfectly and it becomes an effective formulaic strategy of communication

Formulaicity The shape of Formulaicity (Wray, 2002): a whole, a ready-made structure (Fig.1)

Fig.1 Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp, in: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/ dada/marcel-duchamp-and-the-readymade

Formulaicity Sequences which are represented as wholes (Wray, 2002, 2012) •  appear to be stored and processed in the mind as holistic units •  learned over time

A multi-word expression stored and processed as a chunk (Bybee (2010)

Chunking effect or packing Lexical unity / noun

•  roi

Complex Lexical Derived unity

•  royaliste

Complex Lexical uttering Unity Fig. 2. Proverbial utterance by Mejri (2008)

•  “Il ne faut pas être plus royaliste que le roi”

Formulaicity Pragmatically routine formulas •  “How do you do”; “I beg your pardon”; “Oh no! “

Conventionalized forms (ready-made utterances) •  “Give me a break”; “you’re kidding”;” I know what you mean”; “[I’m] just looking [thanks!]”

Proverbs •  “Better late than never”; “Do as I say, not as I do”

Formulaicity

irregularity or variability in their internal structure (prosodic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels), which increase their descriptive complexity. (Wray & Perkins, 2000)

Polyfunctionality

Formulaicity

to advice; to express some generalizations, to express greetings such as “Fancy meeting you here” (Norrick, 1985)

Polysemanticity (metaphorical as in Birds of a feather flock t o g e t h e r. ” o r n o n metaphorical as “ K n o w l e d g e i s power” (Mieder,, 2004: 8: )

Formulaicity

SON WRAY

. 1.

EVALUATION OF THE CURRENT STATE OF PLAY

WORD

Noncompositional

CONGRAMS MEANING SHIFT UNITS COMPOSITIONALITY

CONSTRUCTIONS

FREQUENCY

PROCESSING

CONTINUUM CONTEXT & SALIENCE

Infrequent

Faster

Infrequent compositional strings (controls in experiments; e.g., at the home of)

Faster

IDIOMS (e.g., quid pro quo; lock, stock and barrel)

processing

COLLOCATION

SEMANTIC PROSODY

Frequent noncompositional strings (e.g., Osama Bin Laden)

processing

Frequent

LEXICAL BUNDLES (e.g., at the end of)

Compositional

Fig. 2. Fast (or holistic) processing on two axes. The complex discussion space of current research into formulaic language.

In the course of undertaking the reading for this article, I examined how use results in a new processing route in the brain (H´elie & Cousineau, frequent cent published studies on formulaic language were explicitly or implicitly con2011), can we observe the buildup to reaching that threshold and a change in ptualizing the between:certain features typically associated with Fig.relationship 3. Wray (2012) “the complex discussion space ofbehavior currentonce research intoisformulaic language” response the threshold crossed? mulaicity. I wanted to understand how researchers with different priorities A secondary question, easily missed by those whose own work does not ind approaches were dividing up, and prioritizing and deprioritizing aspects of, volve frequency measures but who are tempted to adopt the idea that frequency e so-called discussion space in which our assembled accounts are located. is a (orInthe) significant variable in formulaicity, is how frequency itself is to be rticular, I was interested in how researchers made links between concepts in

2

Formulaicity

Complex multilevel factors

Fig. 4. “Chunking effect”

“Chunking effect”

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Frequency (reductions)

Usage-based model (Bybee, 2010: 41)

more repetitions expose the phonetic material to more reduction (e.g. The deletion of [d] and “I”, in “I don’t know”)

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Frequency (reductions)

Usage-based model (Bybee, 2010)

with increasing frequency, other more dramatic changes occur in chunks. (…) in morphosyntactic structure, shifts in pragmatic nuances and functions, and change in semantics

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Frequency (reductions)

Elliptical syntactic structure (Norrick, 2009) •  lacking nouns “Slow _and steady wins the race” •  Zero determiner (zero article) “ _Strong drinks, _ weak men”

Alliteration

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Frequency (patterns of rhythms, rhymes)

“Good fame is better than good face”; “All roads lead to Rome”; “First thrive and then wife”.

Rhymes “Well begun is half done.”, “Well fed, well bred.”.

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Frequency (prosodic / syntactic patterns)

Prosody and binary syntactic structure Mejri (2001) •  Tel N + Tel N Tel père, tel fils / Like father, like son /

•  Tout V qui V Tout est bien qui finit bien / All is well that ends well

•  Mieux V que V Mieux vaut tard que jamais/ Better late than never /

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Compositionality

Semantically described either as being a proposition or as being a name (Kleber, 1984, 1989) “Dénomination of a generic situation”, different from “commun dénomination” specific to proper names “memorized referential association”, as a noun (lexical item)

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Compositionality

•  Compositionality hopeful, careful, watchful •  Lack of compositionality awful, wonderful (in Bybee, 2010: 45)

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Compositionality

compositionality can be lost while analyzability is maintained, indicating that the two measures are independent (see Table 1) ( Bybee, 2010: 45)

Table 1. Compositionality and analyzability factors

compositionality analyzability pull strings

-

+

air conditioning

+

+

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Compositionality

(…) the more a sequence of morphemes or words is used together, the stronger the sequence will become as a unit and the less associated it will be to its component parts. Bybee (2010: 48)

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Compositionality

The loss of associations with component parts leads to increasing autonomy. Bybee (2010: 48)

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Frequency (Pragmatic association)

Pragmatic act (Mey, 2001); Norrick (1994) (see Fig. 3)

•  Illocutionary acts: The use of a proverb to express asserting, questionning and promissing intentions •  Perlocutionay acts The use of a proverb for the purpose pf convincing, affrontig and consoling.

Illocutionary act of asserting by uttering Tomorrow is a new day

Fig. 5. Pragmatic act (Norrick, 1994)

Perlocutionay act of consoling

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Knowledge (core common ground)

The more common ground we activate, share and create, the better we are supposed to understand each other, and the more efficiently we achieve our desired effect. (Kecskes & Zhang, 2009)

Formulaicity & “Chunking effect” Knowledge (core common ground)

Core common ground (Kecskes & Zhang (2009) •  common sense: about the world) •  culture sense: about cultural norms, beliefs and values of the human society, a community •  formal sense: about the language system that we use in our social interaction

What is a proverb? (selected descriptive multi-factors) Proverbs

Chunking

Frequency

Pragmatic association

Common ground

Compositionality

Illocutionary acts

Fig. 6. Selected dimensions of proverbs as part of formulaic phenomena

Perlocutionary acts

Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta (A word to the wise is enough) Prosodic Social evaluative norms

Syntax

A formulaic complex structure Semantics

Cognition

Pragmatics Fig. 7. Multidimensional description: the formal shape of “Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta”

Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta (A word to the wise is enough)

Perlocutionary Intertext

Perlocutionary intertext (Shie, 2014) promote the connections and interactions between two spans of text, , with the later textual span (or ‘alluding text’)

Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta (A word to the wise is enough) Illocutionary act Perlocutionary act Perlocutionary Intertext by allusion to Gricean text and his concept of “conversational implicature”(1975)

Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta (A word to the wise is enough) Illocutionary act Perlocutionary act Perlocutionary Intertext by comparing with English and Spanish equivalent proverbs

Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta (A word to the wise is enough) to intent to make an allusion to the Gricean Principle of Cooperation; may be used as a piece of folk knowledge to explain the concept of conversational implicature (Grice, 1976)

Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta (A word to the wise is enough) Parabom entendedor, meiapalavra basta

Fig. 8. Perlocutionary Intertext by comparing with English and Spanish equivalent proverbs: the saliency of the quantity of knowledge

Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta (A word to the wise is enough) Diasystemic

A complex comparative system of relations in a Diasystemic analysis (Durco, in this colloquium)

Final Remarks •  In sum •  Conventionalized multi-word lexical unit •  Resulting from a chunking process •  Variability (forms, functions, meanings) •  May be included on formulaic units

Final Remarks Multi-level processing

Internal structure

Usage/ community

Chunking Saliency Formulaic sequence

Time

Uttering

Frequency

Fig. 9. A complex system of interaction of factors

Knowledge common ground Intertexts

Final Remarks

Fig. 10. Representation of a complex system of interaction of factors in the shape of a proverb

Fig. 11. Representation of a Complex Diasystem of Relations in a comparative perspective.

Thank you for your Attention

9th Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs (ICP15), Tavira, Portugal, 5th November