DOI: 10.5176/2251-3566_L317.38
Authors: Beat Glauser
Abstract: The paper compares 23 proverbs plus nine variants from four proverb collections (published between 1856 and 1994) with a view to showing the high number of correspondences between the English-superstrate varieties (Surinam, Jamaica) and the French-superstrate ones (Guadeloupe and Martinique). In four introductory sections the collections are presented as well as characterised briefly, and the problems arising when variants are grouped together and correspondences are set up between different varieties are discussed and exemplified. The main section presents the proverbs and variants under FAT DOES NOT FEEL according to their levels on the ‘Great Chain’, introduced into paremiology as a tool for the analysis of proverbs by Lakoff/Turner in 1989. In the Francophone varieties, FAT DOES NOT FEEL is clearly more important than in the Anglophone ones. The time-lag between the different collections or the stronger awareness of social inequalities in the former French colonies come to mind as possible hypotheses. Time-lag and the decreolis-ation process in the differeent varieties are favoured for several reasons.
Keywords: component; comparison; proverbs; Surinam; Jamaica; Guadeloupe; Martinique; variants; correspondences; FAT DOES NOT FEEL; ‘the Great Chain’.
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