A Lexical and Syntactic Study of Persian Proverbs

Proverbs along with metaphors, idioms, axioms and expressions are among the materials whose quality and quantity contribute to the enrichment of every language. In this article, the objective is, after defining it, to deal with this lingual category in two lexical and syntactic levels. In the lexical level, the proverbial terms and lexicon will be investigated from different angles. 1. The usage frequency of alien, folkloric, or common terms, determined via the samples extracted from well-known proverbs, show that 14.4 percent is Arabic, two percent common and folkloric and about one percent others like "Shekasteh". Such studies are carried out comparatively to convey the frequency of the mentioned lexicon compared to the standard prose and other literary forms like legends, lullabies and proverbs.2. Prohibited or taboo words form 2.75 percent of the total lexicon.3. In the part of lingual advantage of proverbial terms, the function of proverbial lexicon and its influence on durability of Persian terms and in lingual studies are discussed.4. Transformation and displacement of the terms in substitutive level is one of the features of proverbs whose causes will be studied in details. In syntactic level, issues like proverbial expressions, the constituents of proverbial expressions and their sequence, verbal types, structure and mode will be studied. Moreover, omission of constituents of proverbial expressions in eight grammatical types will be examined by presenting adequate evidence and also the quality and kinds of these omissions will be determined. In the end, the written and verbal categories will be rendered.The methodology is descriptive-analytical based on the samples and case studies. 50 proverbs from five recorded proverbial sources in standard Persian have been provided. Therefore, spoken cases have not been included in this research.