2019/4, стр. 363 - 371

THE SPECIFICS OF BULGARIAN PROVERBS IN THE RUSSIAN-BULGARIAN-CZECH-SLOVAK-ENGLISH PAREMIOLOGICAL CORE

Резюме: The Russian-Bulgarian-Czech-Slovak-English paremiological core was revealed by the author in 2018. It is based on the Russian paremiological minimum of G. L. Permyakov and its reflection in the three Slavonic languages and the English language. The core is a condensation of a few author’s published collections of frequent current Slavonic and English proverbs and the results of the author’s sociolinguistic paremiological experiment. Special attention is paid to the semantics of Bulgarian proverbs as proverbial parallels of Russian paremiological minimum and – for the first time –t o the semantic specifics of Bulgarian proverbs as a part of the analyzed 5-languages paremiological core.

Ключови думи: Bulgarian proverbs; G. L. Permyakov; Russian paremiological minimum; paremiological core; Czech; Slovak; English

1. Introduction

Paremiology is the philological science about paremias, which attracts the attention of both folklorists and linguists, and in its essence it is the field of philology, which combines, like stylistics, literary and linguistic methods of research. The object of paremiology is paroimia.

Folklorists study proverbs, jokes, sayings, tongue twisters, riddles, fables, i.e. small folklore genres within the framework of paremiology.

Linguists-paremiologists study proverbs, it should be kept in mind that the object of attention of some linguists is often defined by them as “proverbs and sayings”.

The proverb is understood as a stable verbal complex that has a syntactic structure of a closed sentence, has an aphoristic, direct or figurative plan of expression, denotes a situation, contains a moralizing maxim or philosophical generalization and entered the language both from folklore and from other sources, for ex., Bulgarian proverb Тихата вода е най-дълбока (lit. Still waters are the deepest) – English Still waters run deep (Kotova & Kolpakova, 2018: 134).

The saying is considered as a term identical to the terms “phraseological unit”, for ex., Bulgarian тиха вода (lit. still water).

Thus, the proverb is the object of paremiology, and the saying (phraseological unit) is the object of phraseology.

The question of the place of paremiology in linguistics, its relationship with phraseology, the object of paremiology and the theoretical foundations of paremiography is still open (Laukakangas, 2001, 2018; Mokienko, 2018; Petrova-Stoyanova, 2006).

2. Bulgarian and russian paremiology and paremiography

Bulgarian proverbs were first published in a collection in 1842, by the first Bulgarian folklorist I. A. by Bogorov. From this event we can follow the history of Bulgarian paremiography and paremiology. Lists of Bulgarian proverbs have started to be published on the pages of the magazines “Lyuboslovie” (1844), “Bulgarian eagle” (1846), “Gaida” (1865 – 1867), etc.

In 1861, there appeared a new collection of Bulgarian proverbs, compiled by L. Karavelov (volume of 3000 units), where he attempts to compare Bulgarian proverbs with Serbian and Russian ones.

Of particular importance for the Bulgarian paremiography is the work of P. R. Slaveikov, who in 1843 began and in 1890 completed the book of Bulgarian proverbs “Bylgarski pritchi ili poslovitsy i kharakterni dumi”.

In the XIX – XX century there are a number of serious paremiological studies: of I. D. Shishmanov, I. V. Ftichev, S. S. Bobchev, M. Arnaudov and others. In all these works, proverbs were considered as special folklore units, the question of the paremiological level of the language had not yet been clearly formulated.

In 1980, Sergey Vlakhov published in Bulgaria the Russian-Bulgarian dictionary of proverbs, created on the material of the paremiological minimum of the Russian language, identified by G. L. Permyakov, and collections of Bulgarian proverbs from XIX – XX centuries.

In 1998 in Sofia Sergey Vlakhov published a 6-languages dictionary “Sypostavitelen rechnik na poslovitsi – bylgarski, ruski, anglijski, frenski, nemski (i latinski)” – the first multilingual (Bulgarian-Russian-English-French-GermanLatin) dictionary of proverbs in Bulgaria. When creating his dictionary S. Vlakhov used all available sources of paremiography.

In Russia in XIV – XVIII centuries the tradition of using paremias in written monuments was formed.

It is known that in 1717 Peter I wrote from Amsterdam to Colonel Levashev, ordering him to send the book “Russian Proverbs”. According to the assumption of I. M. Snegirev, Peter I had in mind the book of Elijah Kopievsky “A Brief and complete manual in arithmetic”, published together with an Appendix to it – Latin and Russian maxims.

The first edition of Russian proverbs was the alphabetical list of Professor Kurganov on 17 pages – “Collection of Russian Proverbs and sayings”. This collection was published in 1769 in St. Petersburg in the book of Professor Kurganov “Russian universal grammar, or General writing”.

Then in 1770 the publishing house of Moscow University published A. Barsov’s book “Collection of 4291 ancient Russian proverbs” (also alphabetical collection).

By decree of Catherine II, the list of selected Russian proverbs was attached to the first Russian alphabet book. Paying great attention to the correct use of proverbs, Catherine II wrote the Comedy “Madness on Proverbs”.

Many Russian proverbs with explanations were included in the first edition of the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, published at the behest of Catherine II in 1789 – 1794.

Here it is necessary to name the following important proverbial collections of the late XVIII-early XIX century: collection of proverbs of A. Bogdanovich (1785), book of D. Knyazhevich “Complete collection of 5365 Russian proverbs and sayings” (1822), and of A. Sergeev “Russian proverbs and sayings” (1830).

A very special place among them is the book of I. M. Snegirev “Dictionary of Russian Proverbs and sayings” (1831 – 1834), consisting of the dictionary of proverbs and monographic part. The monograph by I. M. Snegirev as the first experience of fundamental research on different aspects of paremiology – the history of the Russian paremiography, comparative paremiology, the etymology of proverbs, paremiological stylistics, etymology of pranostics – still has not lost its scientific relevance.

In 1862 the most fundamental dictionary of Russian proverbs was published by V. I. Dahl’s – a two-volume dictionary “Proverbs of the Russian people” (30 000 paroemias). Preface (“Naputnoe”) to the two volumes, written by V. I. Dahl, is still the software to determine the object of paremiology and paremiography methods.

Collection of Russian proverbs in two volumes, created by V. I. Dahl, presents Russian proverbs and sayings in thematic chapters, for example: “God – Faith”, “Faith – Sin”, etc. – the total of 89 chapters in the first and 90 chapters in the second volume of the collection.

After V. I. Dahl’s dictionary there should be mentioned in chronological order as the most significant proverbial dictionaries of the late XIX – early XXI century written by the following authors: M. I. Mikhelson (1894), I. I. Illustrov (1910), V. P. Anikin (1957), M. A. Rybnikova (1961), V. P. Zhukov (1966). C. and M. G. Ashukina (1966); V. P. Felitsyna and Y. E. Prokhorov (1979); V. M. Mokienko,

T. G. Nikitina and E. K. Nikolaeva (2010) and others.

3. Terms of a paremiological minimum and a paremiological core

The founder of the theory of paremiological minimum of language is the Moscow orientalist and paremiologist Prof. G. L. Permyakov (1919 – 1983).

The concept of paremiological minimum and the term itself were introduced by Prof. G. L. Permyakov in the 1970s in his theoretical works on paremiology (Permyakov, 1988). This theory was embodied during his lifetime in the publication of the Russian paremiological minimum, i.e. a separate list of Russian paremias. Prof. G. L. Permyakov included in this list 500 most common proverbs and aphorisms of the Russian language, identified as the most widely used in the course of a long multi-stage sociolinguistic experiment. In order to carry out this experiment, G. L. Permyakov created a scientific laboratory, the tasks of which were the preparation of paremiological questionnaires, testing of informants, processing of questionnaires, etc.

G. L. Permyakov in his works expressed the idea of internationality in the whole paremiological minimum of different languages and the specificity of each individual paremiological minimum, which will manifest itself when combining several paremiological minima. The hypothesis of G. L. Permyakov is indicated by the position of the internationality of folklore put forward by the Soviet folklorist Vladimir J. Propp in the 30-ies of the XX century and the fact that he brilliantly proved it by the examples of fairy tales from different peoples of the world. Until the end of the 90s of the XX century such combination was impossible due to the lack of paremiological minima of other languages.

Five hundred Russian proverbs included in the paremiological minimum of G. L. Permyakov, subsequently served as the basis for the creation of dictionaries of common and therefore normative for Russian language Proverbs, for example, a bilingual Russian-Bulgarian dictionary of proverbs of P. Vlakhov or a multilingual dictionary of proverbs of M. Yu. Kotova “Russian-Slavonic dictionary of Proverbs (with English equivalents)” (RSSPAS) (Kotova, 2000).

Thus, the development of paremiography as a science continues to be influenced by the theory of paremiological minimum of language, which, in fact, forms the concept of language norm in paremiology. Commonly used, well-known and reproducible proverbs and aphorisms, identified with the help of informants during a multi-stage sociolinguistic experiment to determine the paremiological minimum of the language, constitute the normative paremiological corpus of the language and become the main object for the paremiographic description in all types of proverbial dictionaries.

As an example, this interpretation of the paremiological minimum can serve our Russian-Slavonic dictionary of proverbs, where the selection of foreign language proverbs of the Russian equivalents to the proverbs was carried out on the basis of the normativity of the use of proverbs in the affected languages.

After the release of RSSPAS in the light of the normativity of selected foreign-language sayings have been refined during the next corrective phase sociolinguistic experiment on the material of all described in the dictionary of the Slavic languages (Belorussian, Bulgarian, Polish, Serbian, Slovak and Czech). The objectivity of the results used in the preparation of the multilingual proverbial dictionary was thus once again checked. These normative Slavic proverbs, which are parallels of normative Russian proverbs, are likely to be included in the paremiological minima of Slavic languages, the definition of which in all its integrity is still waiting for its researchers (Kotova & Sergienko, 2013; Kotova & Sergienko &Tararaeva, 2017; Kotova, & Kolpakova, 2018).

4. Bulgarian proverbs as proverbial parallels of the russian paremiological minimum

This study considers the Bulgarian proverbs, which are given as parallels to the Russian proverbs in our dictionary (RSSPAS) and then included in an alphabetical Index at the end of the dictionary (Kotova, 2000). To consider the methodological principles of the selection of proverbs for this dictionary, let us show some basic provisions of our preface to the RSSPAS:

– our dictionary includes a total of 5289 proverbs in nine languages;

– it includes all Russian proverbs from the paremiological minimum of G. L. Permyakov, as well as some proverbs from the personal lexicon of the author – a total of 500 paremiological units;

– as Slavic parallels to Russian proverbs, the author sought to use well-known and common proverbs of the corresponding Slavic languages;

– frequency of all Slavic proverbs represented in the dictionary, has been determined by the author’s methodology in the process of a long preparatory work from 1990 to 1998 (Kotova, 1990);

– materials for the paremiological minimum of the Bulgarian language are Bulgarian proverbs, marked in the dictionary with a “+” sign, a total of 264 units (out of 628 Bulgarian proverbial parallels).

The basis for the selection of proverbial parallels was the principle of functional adequacy of the translation of prof. A.V. Fedorov, aimed at creating a perception in the language of translation, functionally identical to that which occurs in the speaker (perceiving) proverb in the original language (in this case – in Russian). Compliance with this principle will be violated if during the selection of parallels we consider only denotative-significative aspect of the semantics of proverbs, without taking into account its connotative aspect, which includes a range of associations, the most important of which should recognize the degree of common knowledge of the proverbs in modern speech. The same Bulgarian proverbs sometimes appear in the dictionary as parallels to different Russian proverbs. This may be due to the presence of a common seme in these Russian proverbs, for example: both variant Bulgarian proverbs Бог забавя, ала не забравя (lit. God tarries, but does not forget) and Господ забавя, но не забравя (lit. God tarries, but does not forget) are given as parallels to two Russian proverbs – Время работает на нас (lit. Time is working for us) and Отольются кошке мышкины слезки (lit. Cat will pay for tears of the mouse), they are bound by the seme ‘ inevitability of the victory of justice’. Another reason for this phenomenon may be synonymous with Russian proverbs, for example: Bulgarian proverb Всяко зло за добро (lit. Each evil is for good) acts as a parallel of synonymous Russian proverbs Не было бы счастья, так несчастье помогло (lit. There would be no happiness, but the misfortune has helped) and Нет худа без добра (lit.There is no trouble without luck), and also the proverb Все к лучшему (lit. Everything is for the best), which is close to them due to the common seme ‘good replaces all previous’.

In some cases, the phenomenon of synonymy of proverbial parallels was manifested. So, for example, as a proverb matches of the proverb Яблоко от яблони недалеко падает (lit. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree) we found out the Bulgarian parallel Крушата не пада по-далеч от дървото (lit. The pear doesn’t fall far from the tree) (95 respondents) and the Bulgarian proverb Каквато майката, такава и дъщерята (lit. / (88 respondents).

During the 2002/03 academic year, a paremiological sociolinguistic experiment was conducted at the University of Plovdiv (Bulgaria) – 100 Bulgarian questionnaires were filled out by students under the supervision of Doc. T. Atanasova. As the questionnaires students were asked to continue with proverbs from the list of Bulgarian proverbs from RSSPAS.

10 years after this experiment, the results of a survey of 100 Bulgarian respondents were clarified in the course of an Internet search for the contexts of the use of all the versions of Bulgarian proverbs given by informants.

The results of this search on the Internet became the book “Handbooks of a Paremiographer. Issue 1”, which includes all 628 Bulgarian proverbs from the list in RSSPAS, but, as recognized by the informants, in a variety of options. Only 15 Bulgarian proverbs out of 628 were indicated by all informants without any variants, for ex.: Бог дал, Бог взел (lit. God gave and God took away); Бърза работа – срам за майстора (lit. Quick work – shame for the master); Бързата кучка слепи ги ражда (lit. Fast dog gives birth to blind puppies) and others (Kotova & Kolpakova & Raina, 2013: 14, 15).

In our “Handbooks of a Paremiographer. Issue 1” there are presented over 4500 variants (given by 100 Bulgarian native speakers) of 628 Bulgarian proverbs from RSSPAS, but only 283 proverbs with their variants received contextual confirmation and can claim the status of an invariant of the ‘alive and active’ proverbial parallel to the Russian proverbs of the paremiological minimum (Kotova & Raina & Sergienko, 2017).

5. Bulgarian proverbs as a part of the russian-bulgarian-czech-slovakenglish paremiological core

We revealed Russian-Bulgarian-Czech-Slovak-English paremiological core after our work “Handbooks of a Paremiographer. Issue 4” was published in 2018. A few our articles were devoted to the problems of a paremiological core (Kotova 1990; 2005; 2015; 2019).There appeared that this core counts 141 Russian proverbs of Permyakov’s paremiological minimum. The whole list of all Russian proverbs from this core was published recently in our article in the Polish journal “Bohemistyka” (No 1, 2019) and here we use the possibility to refer to it (Kotova 2019).

Let us represent 3 groups of all 141 Russian-Bulgarian proverbial parallels from our Russian- Bulgarian- Czech-Slovak -English paremiological core:

1) 52 Russian-Bulgarian proverbial parallels on this list have the same inner form (the same image), for example: Russian Цыплят по осени считают. – Bulgarian Пилците се броят на есен (lit. You have to count your chickens in autumn). That is 36,9 % out of the total number of Bulgarian proverbs from the Russian-Bulgarian-Czech-Slovak-English paremiological core.

2) 32 Russian-Bulgarian proverbial parallels on this list have close (similar) inner form (similar or close image), for example: Russian Сам заварил кашу – сам и расхлебывай (lit. You make your own porridge – you have to eat it) – Bulgarian Каквото си дробил, такова ще сърбаш (lit. What you have cut, that you will eat). That is 22,7 % out of the total number of proverbs from the Russian-BulgarianCzech-Slovak-English paremiological core.

3) 57 Russian-Bulgarian proverbial parallels demonstrate absolutely different inner form – 40,4 % out of the total number of proverbs of our 5-langugages paremiological core, for example: Russian Не говори «гоп», пока не перепрыгнешь (lit. Don’t say “hop” until you jump over) – Bulgarian Рибата още в морето, а той сложил тигана /lit. Fish is still in the sea, and he had already put the pan on the fire/.

6) Conclusion

Bulgarian proverbs as parallels to Russian proverbs of the paremiological minimum of G. L. Permyakov number 283 paremiological units (according to our statistics of our “Handbooks of a Paremiographer. Issue 1”). These 283 Bulgarian proverbs with their variants received contextual confirmation via the Internet use and can claim the status of an invariant of the ‘alive and active’ proverbial parallels to the Russian proverbs of the paremiological minimum (Kotova & Kolpakova & Raina, 2013).

We have just represented here for the first time the Bulgarian proverbs from the Russian-Bulgarian-Czech-Slovak-English paremiological core (consisting of 141 Russian proverbs with proverbial parallels from the four languages). The revealing of this core is our attempt to confirm G. L. Permyakov’s idea of the existence of an international paremiological core (our 141 Russian proverbs out of 500, that is 28,2 % of the Russian paremiological minimum).

The Bulgarian proverbs in the Russian-Bulgarian-Czech-Slovak-English paremiological core are divided into 3 semantic groups: with the same inner form (36,9 % out of the total number of Bulgarian proverbs from the core); with the close (similar) inner form or image (22,7 % out of the total number of Bulgarian proverbs from the core); with the absolutely different inner form or imagery (40,4 % out of the total number of Bulgarian proverbs of the core).

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