Les proverbes et la pauvreté : méthodologie d’analyse linguistique et corpus-driven des proverbes sur la pauvreté en français et en italien

Vincenzo Lambertini, Université de Bologne

vincenzo.lambertini2(at)unibo.it

Abstract: The most important Italian and French dictionaries of proverbs list a high number of proverbs relating to poverty. However, the analysis of two large comparable corpora reveals that in the Italian corpus itWaC there is no proverb containing the word povertà (i.e., poverty), while in the French corpus frWaC the word pauvreté occurs only in few proverbs.

In this study, I put forward a paremiological research methodology combining a linguistic approach with a corpus-driven one. I first focus on the linguistic necessary conditions for proverbs, before discussing a method for the semi-automatic retrieval of proverbs on poverty in the two above-mentioned corpora. This bottom-up approach is compared to more traditional top-down approaches, which usually consist in identifying and analysing proverbs through the most common dictionaries of proverbs. Finally, I explore proverbs that are frequently used in poverty-related contexts, and I highlight the potential of the methodology described in the study, especially in fields such as translation and language learning.