Sur le sens des proverbes

Georges Kleiber (Universite de Strasbourg) : On the Semantics of Proverbs Is there any hope of building an adequate semantics for proverbs ? The aim of this paper is to give a positive answer to this question. It is indeed possible to define what a proverb is, semantically speaking. Our characterization lies on two basic claims. The first is that a proverb has the status of a sentential denomination with generic import. The second shows that his semantic structure always conveys an implication which relies two situations involving humans. We can thus predict the constraints which must be satisfied by a generic sentence to become a proverb and, at the same time, explain the metaphorical character of certain proverbs and also the synecdochic mechanism in other proverbs.Kleiber Georges. Sur le sens des proverbes. In: Langages, 34ᵉ année, n°139, 2000. La parole proverbiale, sous la direction de Jean-Claude Anscombre. pp. 39-58