Variacións das paremias españolas recompiladas por Charles Cahier

Abstract

One of the specific features of the phraseological units as a whole and the proverbs in particular is the unalterableness of the word order. Nevertheless, proverbs as well as other linguistic elements either evolve or sink into oblivion, remain unaltered through their entire period of use or undergo transformations to a greater or lesser extent. In this article we will analyze the different variations to which a proverb is subjected over time. In order to achieve this objective we have chosen the 600 Spanish phraseological units included in the paremiological work “Quelques six mille proverbes et aphorismes usuels empruntés à notre âge et aux siècles derniers” by Charles Cahier (1856) and we have carried out an extensive comparative analysis with the proverbs compiled in the Refranero Multilingüe (Instituto Cervantes). The results obtained from the study of the orthographic, lexical and syntactic variables will help us to build the different variation models and to provide a possible explanation to the evolution of phraseological units with the objective of finding the classic version of the proverb as a point of departure from which all the changes have progressively appeared