Al-haraka baraka : strukturně-variační pohled na středověká arabská přísloví a rčení

The present book offers a variationist view on a set of medieval Arabic proverbs. The proverbs were collected from a historical electronic corpus of Arabic containing approx. 420 million words. The resulting collection contains almost 400 proverbs. First, the sources of the proverbs are treated. They are found in the Quran, which is a rich source of inspiration for Muslims. Another important source are the hadiths, stories on the deeds of the Prophet, where many of his sayings became proverbial (or reflect older proverbial tradition). Another important source is the Arabic poetry, and a number of poetical passages are identified with a remarkable number of quotations. In the following part, semantic frames of several types of proverbs are studied. It is shown that these semantic frames can serve as a foundation of several types of variation. One of the most widely used type is a development of a “synonymical” series, where a certain role in the proverb can be represented by a number of words where a certain semantic connection can be seen (in our example, the sequence of man ~ human ~ clever one ~ wise one ~ muslim, etc.). Some parts of the proverb can be extended or changed. This type of modulation can be both semantic and grammatical. While the grammatical one works within the same meaning of the proverbial frame, semantic modulation can serve in the process of variations of the proverbs. E.g., in the frame ‘who is obedient to God, God will raise him', a possible modulation is e.g. ‘in this world ~ in the hereafter', ‘on the Judgment day', etc. There are proverbs that consist of a rather steady phrase, which constitutes the situation, and a supplement to the phrase then explains the position of the speaker. E.g., the phrase ‘time will come when…'is followed by a varied pale€ e of possible amendments, describing diff erent types of a diff erent future, either positive or (in our example more frequently) negative. Similarly, the phrase ‘three things will bring you goodwill of your fellow'offered eight possible extensions. Slightly less frequent and with less variation is the type where the steady phrase appears at the end of the u€tterance. The proverbial saying ‘there are four types of men'with the development of their relation to knowledge (ranging from a wise man to an ignorant) with instructions on suggested a€ttitudes towards them (follow him or repudiate him) is used for an illustration of the development of such a saying. In our data, there are twelve different types, and a model of their development and heritance is shown. In the final chapter, frequential aspects of our collection are treated. Several types of overall numbers are offered, including the length of the proverbs, their frequency, or their appearance along the chronological line. Finally, several typical examples of the frequential distribution in the particular centuries are given. In the appendix, a whole list of the proverbs is offered, including the most common types of variation. This is accompanied by information on their frequency, the first occurrence (century) and in some cases also the source of individual proverbs (the Quran, hadiths).