Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології

The convolution of textual structures in succinct aphoristic enunciations in the manner of lyrical digressions makes a distinctive mark of dramatic genus. As the paragon for sentences taken from dramatic action and used as proverbs Seneca can be regarded⁶⁵⁷. This precedent case is in particular very instructive as to the experience of the Ukrainian baroque drama that was born within the environment of the respected Christianized Seneca. As an eloquent example of cues becoming proverbial sentences one can take I. Nekrashevich’s “Исповhдь” ‘Confession’. Thus it is Духовник (The Priest) who proclaims the instructive sentences “Всегда бо мы грhшни всh, яко человhки” (We are always sinful as we are human beings), “Беззаконія всегда творим, хоть неради” (We always behave unlawful although we are not glad), “Всh грhхи смhло творил, но не звал грhхами” (He committed all the sins boldly though did not call them sins) that are periphrastic transformations of oratorical commonplaces. Another dramatis persona, Исповhдающійся человhк (The Confessed Man), tries to justify himself with the objection that he «хлhба та соли не збавив нhкого» (hasn’t deprived anybody of bread and salt) so that he uses actually a variant of the proverb «без солі, без хліба худая бесіда» (it/s a poor chat without salt and bread).

The folding power of aphorisms may be exemplified with the proverb “правда очі коле” (the truth pricks the eyes) that presumes the motif [eye-pricking truth] → [painful truth] → [bitter truth]. The very motif had been once uttered by Danton and chosen as the epigraph for Stendhal’s novel “Red and Black”: “La verité, l’âpre verité” (the truth; the sour (austere) truth). Such a notion presupposes a wide net of references to the romantic critical attitudes that led to the formation of critical realism. The proverb погляди с# козлє у воду на свою уроду (look, thou goat, in water at thy beauty) [Зіновіїв 818] implies the motif [a monster looking in a mirror] that is developed in the fable “Monkey and Mirror”. Besides, there are also implied motifs [water as the receptacle of truth] and [goat as monster]. Thus one can say that proverbs retain relics of narratives that would explain their derivative meanings. These relics turn to rudiments for further restored and reintegrated narratives. In its turn such motifs are represented with word collocations that are built as the expansions of key words. In this respect the expanded words resemble hieroglyphic characters as they are germs growing to multitudes of meanings.

The compressive capacity of a separate motif to become a referential nodal point so that it could fold the whole contents of an extent narrative presumes that the respective notions are variable as to their scopes. In other words it presumes the abuse of the logical principle of extent and identity demanding the constancy of a notion’s parameters. Semantic derivation’s opportunities inherent to a motif enable the development of such properties. The mutability of the scope and volume of a motif can be illustrated with the motif of [a ring]. In one case this object is mentioned as a singular and even occasional thing, for example in an exchange of wedding rings connected with the betrothal. In other cases in fairy tale a ring becomes a magic object able to inform about the state of affairs: a danger being envisaged, it changes the color. A ring can become also the central symbol, so that the whole plot is built around it: the examples are numerous, from those of the tales on a ring thrown in a sea and found in a fish’s stomach till the myth in the Niebelung’s ring.

The very idea of conceiving proverbs as the compressions of narratives was developed by A.A. Potebnya who explained proverbial periphrastic descriptions as the device of folding references to a fable. It goes about the 5-th lecture from his treatise “From the lections on the theory of verbal art” where the “transition of a fable in the proverb with the means of inversion” has been shown. Respectively a proverb becomes a periphrastic designation of a parable “if the contents of the narrative were quite known”, a narrative in its turn becomes “possible etymology of a proverb”[Потебня, 1990, с. 90, 93, 99]. Such situation becomes especially obvious in the cases with animal characters (as in the mediaeval bestiaries) and other personifications. For instance the proverb «чує кіт у глечику молоко солодке, та морда коротка» (the Tomcat feels sweet milk in a pot, but his muzzle is too short) presupposes the existence of parabolic narration compressed in the cited sentence (similar to a well-known fable on the fox and grapes). Another sentence as in the example «пішов глечик за водою та й пропав там з головою» (once a jar parted for water and perished there with its head) implies the personification of the mentioned utensil.

The peculiarity of proverbs is that they not only fold (compress) fables and parables but also at the same time unfold (expand) the idioms in deciphering the tropes that they contain. It becomes especially evident in the riddles where periphrastic description designates not merely an object that as to be guessed but the whole symbolic aura of this object. For instance the riddle “глибоке провалля, а в проваллі чорненьке” [Номис, 441] (a deep precipice, in the precipice something black) with the solution “a water-well” can’t be exhausted with such an answer. The very image of black bottom of the precipice generates thoughts and dreams of enigmatic matters. The mentioned solution becomes only a pretext for the unfolded process of interpretation of such image.

That the proverbs represent the folds of fables is attested for ages. These folds contain the expression explicable with the narrative of a respective fable that gives reasons for semantic transitions that take place within this or that proverb’s text. In its turn aphorisms can be regarded in relation towards the idioms that they include as their explications of minimal scope. They represent idioms on the minimal level of terminated judgments. Idioms as incomplete derivative constructions always expect continuation and completion, and the aphorism gives such a minimum. As to the wider scope of narration aphorisms (and proverbs in particular) behave as riddles as far as they put the task of finding such a narrative (in particular fable) that would correctly explain its contents and give motivation for their figurative sense. One deals here with the general law of allegories that presuppose the folding and the development of its derivative meanings. A parable or an apologue implies their folds within the scope of an aphoristic sentence, of a proverb, as well as a proverb implies such an unfolded content of a narrative. Each fold presupposes the referential net that procures not only textual integrity but also the coherence of a corpus of texts. The process of the folding of a narrative in a proverbial utterance is also tightly connected with the perspective of commenting this narrative. Beauty of words evoke multitude of comments. It follows from here that the folding of a textual compression and the self-descriptive properties of aphorisms are reciprocally interdependent. Each description presumes the summary of something described, and the use of autonomous means of a text for self-description also evokes the selection of fragments capable to condense referential net.

Evidently a fold always can be conceived as a rudiment or a relic of the folding procedure. Here one can find an intersection with the diachronic aspects of language. Thus fragments of a text serving to remind of it as a whole are not merely points of a referential net. These remnants of a textual tissue are also germs capable of restoring the whole. Thus it doesn't go only of folds as separated fragments: they are relics and rudiments of the disintegrated and reintegrated textual entity. The importance of the plots' folds in proverbs may be demonstrated in the searches for equivalent versions of the proverbs in different languages.

Compression as one of the principal properties of proverbs entails the importance of motivational aspects of these texts. The weight of motivation reveals itself especially in its stretching out beyond the realm of purely meaningful semantic relations and involving such distantly laid spheres as those of etymology and phonology with prosody. From one side it is etymological regeneration and simulation that play enormous role in the formation of proverbial locutions. From another side proverbial texts are to be conceived as verses so that all phonological forces that participate in versification come into play here. Thus one can say of the role of extraneous forces from beyond the actual realm of language’s reality that are involved due to the growth of motivational net of proverbial texts.

While compressing the whole and restricting the number of lexical units coming into play proverbs normally diminish this number to the minimal borderline of pair. The proverbs are then built usually as binary combinations of different levels from the simple adjacent combinations of predicates with complements till the distant correlation of predicates. These paired utterances in its turn always refer to the third that remains latent and implicit. Therefore the initial proverbial couple always refers to the outer utterance and builds up the triad. Binary collocations occupy a privileged place within the enumerative listing structure due to their correspondence with the compression of proverbial text. They serve as the germs of the generation of proverbial text. A special kind of these minimal binary lists create the chiefly substantive structure of partitive synonyms.

Here partitive synonyms coincide with occasional synonyms (or antonyms as the poles of the same semantic field) valid for the chosen passage only. Such a structure is known for ages as rhetoric figure called in Greek as hendiadyoin (literally “bifurcation, bisection”). It is to be found in the proverbs “Fire and water are good servants but bad masters”, “The fire which warms us at a distance will burn us when near” where one obtains such antonymous pairs as [good & bad], [servant & master], [distant & near] as well as partitive synonyms (in the sense of the equivalent situational role) [fire & water], [warm & burn]. Another sample of a synonymous pair we find in the proverbs “time and tide wait for nobody”, “tread straight and narrow path”, “care the minute and the pence, hour and pound will care themselves” with occasional synonymous pairs [straight & narrow], [minute & pence], [hour & pound] as well as the etymological figure (and in this sense a kind of tautology) [time & tide]. Such minimal binary registers demonstrate the fact that partonyms are intersected with synonyms (and with the division of lexical stuff in semantic fields in general) so that the further investigation of the interrelation of the both of them does represent an interesting task. The very act of the participation in a periphrastic description creates prerequisites to reveal occasional synonymous relations of the involved lexical units. Of a special importance is the fact that these registers are part and parcel of the lexical tissue of proverbs: it means the existence of self-descriptive enumerative structures within the core of proverbial text to be sought and studied.

It is especially to notice that the existent of such coupled collocations builds up an entire class of proverbial texts. One can exemplify it with the English locutions of the type: sudden and unexpected, fair and above board, every nook and corner (cranny), care and diligence, watch and ward, safe and sound, meat and fee [Медведєва, Дайнеко, 1994]. There are at least two circumstances worth noticing in this respect. First of all one can easily build composed words from such coupled components. Besides, it is the third word to be found out as an additional synonym to denote the ideas characterized with such couples: for the cited row it will give respectively abrupt, honest, overall, accuracy, vigilance, robust, salary. It shows clearly the implicit presence of triad in each minimal collocation.

The concept of partitive synonymy was very long ago used in instructive manuals, for instance, as the enumerations of the things depicted in illustrative pictures (such was the famous treatise Orbis sensualium pictus by J. A. Komensky). Partial description of a situation inherent in idioms gives details of the situation without its whole picture, and the nomination of such details creates the register of the subjects involved in it. For instance the proverb “money spent on the brain is never spent in vain” gives such a series of occasional partonyms that participate in the represented situation: [spend – money – brain – vanity (in vain)]. They are to be taken in various binary relations ([spend - money] [spend – in vain] [money - brain] etc.) to examine their semantic transition. Such self-descriptive structures ensue from periphrastic description and make up a latent pattern that serves as the “landmarks” on the “road” of building an integral textual structure.

In particular proverbs are to be regarded as a kind of ready rows of partitive synonyms: [лес – дрова – даль (forest – fuel – plenty – distance (depth)] for «дальше в лес – больше дров» (the deeper the forest, the more the fuel)), [ковка – железо – горячий] ([forging – iron - hot]) («куй железо, пока горячо»). It gives such substantive collocations that can become titles of respective plots: [обилие дров дальнего леса] ([the abundance of the fuel from deep forest]) [ковка горячего железа] ([the forging of hot iron]). There is no need of reminding that such transformation is often used in literature for entitling novels – let such samples as S. Maugham’s “Cakes and ale” or Cronin’s “Hatter’s castle” be here mentioned.

Another reason for the generation of such structures consists in the above discussed experimental properties of proverbs. Respectively the lists of partitive synonyms are to be found in the confronted version of the same proverb generated in variegated way due to the role of variations in folklore. The experimental variability of aphorisms in folklore creates favorable conditions for detecting situational synonyms that can be reciprocally substituted in the respective places of different versions of an aphorism. As an example can be cited such a series of version from V.Dahl’s collection: «Что посеешь, то и пожнешь / Что пожнешь, то и смолотишь / Что смолотиш, то и смелешь / Что смелешь, то и съешь», «Что нальешь, то и выпьешь / Что откусишь, то и съешь» «Что накрошишь, то и выхлебаешь / Каково испечешь, таково и съешь» [Даль, 230]. Here one encounters two rows of situational synonyms that are mutually opposed as the designation of preliminary (preparatory) action and its consequence. The variability of meanings is especially vividly demonstrated with the fact that members of the both rows can pass from one to another: <жать – молотить – молоть – печь – наливать – крошить – откусывать> vs. <жать – молотить – молоть – есть>. Thus the inherent property of folklore to generate textual variability in the manner of experimental examination of lexical compatibility entails the emergence of series of partitive synonyms revealed due to the coherence of different proverbial versions. Especially it concerns verbs that wouldn’t become synonyms in other cases. As an example one may regard the Latin proverb “vive et amicitias regum fuge” (live and avoid kings’ friendship) that has the whole row of versions in Ukrainian: “з паном не судися / не братайся / не дружись / не борись” (don’t be at a law / fraternize / be friend / struggle with a lord) etc. Here a series of partitive situational synonyms can be shown that are united with the sense “to have contact, both as friends and as foes”.

The principle of the confrontation of paired words as the representatives of taxonomic classes (in particular of etymological nests) gives wide opportunity for the study of semantic transition. In particular it means that a simple lexical attraction is an interaction between the whole series of lexical units belonging to such classes and not single words themselves. It concerns first of all the variability of proverbial text as that of experimental origin. Word locutions as the elements of aphorisms create rudimentary potential neologisms and occasional formations where the words interact as the representatives of paradigmatic units or even separate dialects that subdue to creolization. Semantic transition exerts pressure upon the inner form of a word and revitalizes its relations to etymological relics. The separation of such locutions is enabled due to experimental syntactic transformation.

In its turn such enumerations presume their reverse transformation into a text so that new idiomatic compound substantives arise. Thus the problem of composita emerges that intersects with that of the revival of archaic incorporated languages. As the places of condensed heterogeneity proverbs can be regarded also as the relics of incorporated type of grammar (as the satellite textual glossaries can be said to retain relics of the isolated type). In particular the above mentioned “wellerisms” attest such incorporated structure of proverbial expressions as the stable collocations representing the opportunity of continuation referring to entire enunciation as an indivisible unit. The features of the incorporated type of grammar are to be seen in the fact that each proverbial simple sentence can be replaced with an artificially built composed word used as an autonomous member of sentence. Thus the proverb “small spark makes a great fire” can derive a composed noun “the - great – fire – making – small - spark” that functions as an integral lexical unit and refers to the proverbial contents: for example this derivative noun can designate the event from which fatal consequences ensue. In the same way some composed words can display the references to idiomatic expressions they are derived from as in «головомойка» (‘head washing’, Germ. Das Kopfwashen) implying the knowledge of the idiomatic meaning of the locution ‘to wash the head’.

Bright examples of the formation of composed words as the self-descriptive device of proverbial text can be found in the collection of V. Dahl. For instance, the addition to the proverb «Маслом каши не испортишь. Каши не пермаслишь» (One can’t spoil porridge with oil. Porridge is not to be over-oiled) [Даль, 1957, 861] attests the derivative prefixed construction apt for the very singular case. The construction of the kind of «Отогрел змею за пазухой. Запазушная змея» (One has warmed the serpent at the bosom. Serpent-from-the-bosom) [Даль, 1957, 137] can be cited where also the derivative <* запазушнозмеиный> (the-serpent-from-the-bosom-like) attests the formation of complex words in proverbs.

The problem of lexical delimitation in connection with the demonstrated neologisms remains still an acute linguistic task for the study of Chinese vocabulary as well as of the word stuff borrowed from there, namely, due to the difficulty «to discern words from word combinations» [Панфилов, 2008, 58]. At the same time there is a phenomenon of “chaining” words in Japanese, where the words are combined «as if for the first time creating a composite word» [Вардуль, 1964, 26]. The achievements of cognitive linguistics allow us to attempt a new approach while regarding the lexical delimitation problem in indirect way through a vast scope of the Chinese loan words in Japanese which build a peculiar kind of such a “chaining”.

The notion of frame seems to become useful for the attempts to define the degree of autonomy of separate morphemes belonging to ‘kango’ and being combined in solid compounds as lexical units. It concerns first of all those building the verbs with ‘– suru’ formants. Here the morphemes of Chinese origin endure semantic shifts as the result of assimilation and transformation into a denominative verb. Another process that accompany such a derivation is the de - etymologization of these morphemes enabling their autonomy. Such transformations give an opportunity to treat separated morphemes as the components of potential ‘composita’ and as the object of combinatory natural experiment of a kind of the mentioned “chaining”. The combination of morphemes (usually in pairs) is to be considered as a frame in the sense of cognitive linguistics owing to their restricted ability to be copulated and to reveal different semantic components depending upon their valence. In this respect the verbs with ‘– suru’ formants correspond best of all to the definition of a compound lexical unit taking into consideration that «the lexicalization of combination presupposes its idiomatization» [Майсак, 2005, 66].

The fact that paired morphemes are to be compared to idioms can be demonstrated with the circumstance of the emergence of new peculiarities, and it is the idioms as a class of solid compounds that possesses the features of frames. Thus, for instance, the morpheme ‘i’ in ‘kango’ verbs ‘ishutsu-suru’ ‘to transport’, ‘icho:-suru’ ‘to message’, ‘iten-suru’ ‘to change the residence’, ‘ifu-suru’ ‘to leave (heritage)’ bears a semantic common denominator of ‘verba movendi’ while it has no autonomous use and it means ‘to change’ in general sense as a ‘wago’ verb ‘utsuru’. The effect of framing is easily to be observed in the cases where at least one of the paired morphemes is used separately as a word. As a bright example can serve ‘ai-suru’ ‘to love’ and “aises-suru‘ ‘to touch’, the idea of “bodily contact” being delineated in such a frame. Such effects were already the object of researches in the case of the so called “aquamotion” verbs where, for example, ‘fujo:-suru’, ‘fuyo:-suru’ (both bearing the sense of ‘moving up in the liquid substance’) include a morpheme ‘fu’ that, in contrast to the previous, has no lexical independence [Панина, 2007, 636]. Another approach in detecting verbal frames deals with the inversion of prepositional and postpositional places of the paired morphemes. Such are, for instance, ‘rippuku-suru’ ‘to become angry’ and the names ‘fukuan’ ‘a design’, ‘fukuzo: -naku (no-nai)’ ‘overtly’, where the morpheme ‘fuku’ delineates the frame of transferred senses derived from its primary meaning ‘abdomen’. Another case of such a framing inversion may be indicated in ‘o:sho:-suru’ ‘to serve jealously’ and ‘sho:aku-suru’ ‘to master’ where the primary sense of the morpheme ‘sho:’ with ‘wago’ pronunciation ‘tanagokoro’ ‘a palm’ serves as the source for semantic derivatives.

It becomes here convenient to return to the above discussed L. Tesniere’s concept of syntactic node with its particular representation of predicative relations⁶⁵⁸. It has been generalized in the notion of “connective node” suggested by M.L. Gasparov⁶⁵⁹. These ideas come back still to O. Jespersen’s concept of nexus (as opposed to junction)⁶⁶⁰. The importance of the last one is still more persuasive as it enables representing the particular relationships arising within predicates’ neighborhood including completive attachments⁶⁶¹. Such development of the concept of nodal structures with the involvement of nexus seems to be productive for analyzing microscopic syntax (as well as taxis’ profitability for macroscopic analytical tasks). One can easily notice the prevalence of the nexus & taxis’ constructions within the corpus of proverbs. The completive connections obviously prevail and due to semantic transitions they further distance in the manner of the combination of words from different dialects as they violate lexical compatibility. In particular the indefiniteness of oracle’s voice and impersonal utterance help in intensifying the role of nexus. As to the taxis it becomes the common syntactical rule of proverbs as compressions that presuppose wider textual evolvement. Moreover it is taxis that provides the discussed opportunities of the inferential transformations of proverbial sentences. One can easily recognize in a typical proverbial sentence the features of nexus as the syntactic tool for the above discussed “encapsulation” of content.

Actually predicative and completive collocations gain special importance in the very procedure of a word expansion with the resulting rise of proverbial locutions⁶⁶². Respectively one can discern the two classes of these structures where (in opposite to the mentioned hendiadys of chiefly substantives) the verbal predicative members participate. These are the completive collocations (those of verb with complement) that would correlate with nexus and distant predicative taxis built of a pair of predicates. The importance of such devices reveals in their productivity so that they can serve not only to textual description but also to transformation and disclose therefore the transformability as the property of proverbial texts.

As an example of the completive kind of collocations may serve the proverb “an ill cook cannot lick his own fingers” with a verbal nod of complement nature [licking fingers] that betrays obvious idiomatic features. In opposite to the above cited minimal indices (present as enumerative registers within the proverbs themselves and subsequently revealing their self-descriptive nature) with the pairs of coordinated words such motif represents collocation as an inseparable unit delineating lexical attraction of the key-word (lick in the last example) with obvious subordination. These subordinate collocations are not mere registers as they represent the very “expansion” of the key-word in a collocation. Idioms arise just from such inseparable collocations and it is due to subordinate relationship that they use the opportunities of lexical attraction. While detecting these minimal “excrescences” upon the key-word of idiom we obtain the device for its self-description. Such collocation wins relative independence within the scope of the sentence that includes it: in the proverb “the feet are slow when the head wears snow” it is evident that the collocation [wearing snow] as the periphrastic description of growing grey acts independently and separately. Due to independence such collocations act as the devices for self-reflection and self-description of text promoting its changeability.

Thus a potential syntactic perspective of mutually referred predicates comes to being with an outlook of the mentioned predicative perspective of clausal structure. This perspective is still present as a germ that gives grounds for the expansion of words based on their referential nets. Respectively this property is easy to be inversed, and thus one can say of the compressing opportunities of circumlocutions as the basis for proverbs. While being the minimal expansion of words they presuppose also that key words can become their compressions. It means that they themselves can be regarded as the compressed narratives. Together with reciprocally correlated predicates as the vehicles of generalities (in the manner of (S) HE DOES IT scheme) there appears the necessity of circumstantial particulars that would impart concreteness to such schemes. It is neither generalities nor particulars of details that determine the proverbial contents: it is the mediation of them where is the adequate comprehension to find. In particular proverbs become then formulae of the plots of these narratives which become enfolded expansions of such sentences in the same manner as the proverbs are such expansions of words.

The already mentioned encapsulation as the packing (compressing and evolving) aspects of proverbial textual integration correlate with the peculiarities of syntactic structure of proverbs. It is here to stress that such peculiarities promote in refuting a widely spread opinion as to the absolute dominance of paratactic constructions of coordination in comparison to hypotactic constructions of subordination and complex sentences in folklore. Syntactic perspective as the initial cause for subordination becomes a necessary prerequisite for textual coherence so its vestiges and germs must have been observed in folklore as well. This statement is supported among others with the study of the syntax of Byelorussian folktales. In particular it was remarked that a special kind of asyndeton prevails in the combination of sentences that are comparable to usual complex sentences [Борковский, 1981, 58 ff.]. The objection that such observations are inferred from the records of genuine folklore texts is easily refuted with the abundance of hypotactic sentences in the proverbial texts. A work by Z.K. Tarlanov devoted to the study of proverbial syntax gives grounds for the assumptions of the intensive development of subordinate relations in these texts. The initial prerequisite here is the very didactic task of proverbs that presupposes the binary dissection of their texts⁶⁶³. Binary combinations of lexical level are repeated at the level of subordinate clauses and parallel propositions.

The prevalence of such “quadrangular” schemes can be demonstrated from another source where the frequency of the use of proverbs was taken into account. It has turned out that the most spread proverbs were built according to the very scheme: бодливой корове Бог рог не дает; видит око да зуб неймет; лучше синица в руке, чем журавль в небе; куй железо, пока горячо (The God doesn’t give horns to a cow that likes to butt; the eye sees but the tooth hasn’t; a tomtit at hand is better than a crane in the heaven; forge the iron while it is heated) etc. [Пермяков, 1988, 154 - 162]. They all distinguish with the very fact of binary presentation of interrelated situational antonyms that build the mentioned rhetorical figures of hendiadys though in this case such an interrelation takes place at a distance. In particular, here such figures include paired combinations eye – tooth, cow – horn, tomtit – crane, forge – heat etc.

As to the structure of such paired relations let be shown the proverb “кто долго лежит, у того бок болит” (if one sleeps (lies) long the side will ache). There are here two completive nodes of the contacted words: [to lie long] (in the meaning [to sleep long]) and [side aches]. At the same time there appears a distant “bracket” [lie - ache] where the verbs become a minimal listing structure of situational partitive synonyms in the sense of the participation in the process of distorting human shape. From here a question arises as to the relations between contact collocations (that of immediately connected lexical units, the contiguous ones inclusive) and the distant interrelation between lexical units that are severed with other words but confronted within a proverb’s entirety. The very prevalence of the described “quadrangular” structure gives grounds for the conclusion about the leading role of the distant confrontation of predicates. In particular it presumes the development of taxis in proverbs so that the predicates must have been mutually connected. A taxis with its particular revelations (such as comparisons and parallel constructions) becomes a germ for the development of distant relations in text (attested in such phenomenon of poetical syntax as hyperbaton). In proverbs the rudimentary features of these relations can be felt with being bordered within the limits of a single sentence. It gives also grounds to say of distant nodes of predicates together with the constant nodes of completion that determine a proverb’s construction.

In this respect there is still another conclusion to come to. As it has been shown there prevail subordinate relations in the proverbs concealed with their coordinate outlook. Consequently the propositions included in the proverb don’t act as autonomous sentences. The interdependent state of these propositions turns some of them actually to subordinate clauses that betray the inequality of the both members of the pair combined in a proverb. Thus the superficial outlook of parallel or another listing structure conceals the real nodes with subordinate relations. In other words one deals with the transformation proposition → clause and, respectively, List → Text. It means that in the depth of a minimal textual scope of a proverb the whole clausal structure of predicative perspective grows that is here represented in a folded form. The predicative perspective with its clausal structure is germinated in a narrow proverbial space to be further generated in lyrics and drama.

The consequence of the above described referential properties of a verb ensuing from its ruling properties that enable it to evoke complements of substantives and to build distant chains with other verbs consists in particular in its importance as an experimental tool to compose predicative and completive collocations. This role of verb may be attested with proverbial expressions where it determines the nodal structure of text with making up completive collocations as the basis for textual coherence. It can be exemplified with the pair of correlated proverbs “fault denied is twice committed” and “fault confessed is half forgiven”. All the four verbs rule the same complement (fault) and the meaning is determined with their difference. Another case demonstrates the inversed relation: “he that will steal an egg will steal an ox”. There are here (in opposite to the previous case) the single verb that rules different complements. In both cases it is the completive relation of predicates that determines the general derivative meaning of sentences. As far as the same proverb can be regarded as a compression of different anecdotes it dissociates into a bunch of homonymous locutions representing such narratives.

This homonymous effect concerns still more the aspect of verbs used in proverbs. A great number of proverbs have the form of imperative mood though they don’t imply any imperative meaning. Therefore the modality is here used as a homonym to the actual designation. In reality one deals as a rule with the fact that the difference between active and passive voices is of no significance for proverbial enunciations and therefore one can say of middle voice that is felt as a connotation. The “author” and the “hero” of a proverb is anonymous oracle that nothing to do with the active doer of a dramatic work, so the deeds can be represented in reflexive or passive form. Such proverbial advices as “don’t change horses in midstream” or “don’t wait for dead man’s shoes” can easily turn into “*it’s advisable / reasonable not to …” with the respective continuation so that imperative is of no significance for them. The same concerns active indicative in such utterance as “the cat shuts its eyes while stealing cream” that is equivalent to “*cream is stolen by a cat when its eyes are shut”. As it goes about abstract actions committed by an abstract person proverbs don’t designate the particulars of modality. Therefore proverbial aspect can be said virtual as the case is with the syntactic perspective.

An important consequence of “condensed state” of word stuff in proverbs revealed with the collisions of compatibility is the intensity of motivation of verbal sign. This motivational density and intensity presupposes at the same time spontaneity as its paradoxical inversion revealing itself through verbal experiments. In particular it involves the importance of phonological factors in building a proverbial text promote with the minimal size of a proverbial locution where such ultimately restricted space is created with separate phonological features becoming meaningful. Together with this motivational intensification it is to trace the growth of referential net encircling each proverb and evoking implicit contexts. Thus semantic condensation, paired collocation with syntactic perspective referring to virtual latent triad, compressions of narrative and intensified motivation become the principal features that determine the property of aphorisms.

Therefore proverbial expressions become representations of narrative motifs. It is the implications encircling these expressions that are obligatory and impart them the quality of convolutions representing motifs. To sum up, proverbial enunciations represent as a rule nexus & taxis as the initial binary collocations endowed with the capacity of further textual growth and development. The depicted “quadrangular” scheme proves to become the germ consisting of minimal binary couples of predicative and completive elements (in taxis and nexus respectively). It is this binary construction that provides conditions for further textual expansion and semantic transition.