Proverbs and Idioms: a Cross Linguistic Analysis

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Proverbs and Idioms: A cross linguistic analysis . Silvia.Molina@upm.es Abstract This paper addresses some theoretical issues in cross-linguistic phraseological analysis in general comparing English and Spanish and paremiological analysis in particular 2 and focuses on problems which arise in connection with finding pragmatic adequate equivalents which are lexical items of both source and target language which can be used in the same situations. The paper tries to elaborate some principles of contrastive multiword unit analysis from a functional perspective through both the use of empirical data concerning the real usage of idioms (examples from the BNC) and a sound theoretical background. Relevant parameters of cross-linguistic comparison (Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics) will be discussed with several examples trying to offer a typology of non-parallel features between L1 and L2 proverbs and idioms. The starting point for the functional comparison is English . This paper ends up with a discussion on how to translate effectively thirty metaphorical and metonymic proverbs and idioms from English into Spanish and vice versa. Key words: proverbs, corpus, phraseology, idioms, functionalism, paremiology. 1-INTRODUCTION: ENGLISH PROVERBS AND IDIOMS IN PERSPECTIVE Proverbs in English and Spanish are a crystallized summary of popular wisdom or fancy. They are likely, or indeed certain, to have long been current in popular speech before they could make any appearance in literature, or even in collections of such lore. English proverbs have found their way into British and American speech from classical, biblical, British, continental European and American Literature. They offer nuggets of popular wisdom on all aspects of life, including marriage, children, business, food, religion, romance, agriculture, geography, sports, money, law and music.

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