Proverb or Adage: the Terms of Paremiology in the Coverage of Mereology

Author

Yudkin-Ripun Ihor

a Doctor of Art Studies, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, a chief research fellow of the Screen, Stage Arts and Culturology Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine). ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4616-302X

Proverb or Adage: the Terms of Paremiology in the Coverage of Mereology

Abstract

The proverbial idioms are based upon the particulars designated with meronyms that are transformed with complex semantic transitions defined with the term metalepsis. The concept of metalepsis contributes essentially to elucidating the differences between adages and proverbs that belongs to the universal categories of paremiology. In opposite to metaphor as a concise comparison with the generalizing implications, the rhetoric figure of metalepsis doesn’t entail such implications and remains within the level of the abstraction of isolation void of generalization. Just the combinations of synecdoches and metonymies procuring multiple semantic transitions and thus reconsidering the meaningful separated partial details designated with meronyms. In this respect adages can be regarded as those pointing out the decisive partialities while proverbs develop the ensuing semantic transitions. Mereology connects these characteristic details with the subject – object relation where details are reconceived as those belonging to the active subject of entirety in the manner of synecdoche.

In its turn the mutual references of details make metonymy serve as the basis for multiplying semantic transitions within the field of objects of situational circumstances of the utterance. It enables the widening of the interpretative field of the proverbs justifying thus their ancient definition as a kind of allegory. Respectively proverbs can be converted into riddles acquiring thus the problematic mode of utterance whereas adages remain assertive statements. The minimal scope of semantic transformations within the framework of an adage enables reconsidering meronyms as the designations of partialities with regard to their functional dependence upon the entire textual situation. Thus the opportunities are disclosed as to the transformation of meronyms into situational antonyms through the detection of the contrapositions of those particulars within the verbal world’s map.

Keywords

idiom, diathesis, metalepsis, meronym, antonym, synecdoche.

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