Grammatical Structures of Proverbs
Proverbs in various languages are found with a wide variety of grammatical structures. In English. for example, we find the following structures (in addition to others):
- Imperative, negative - Don't beat a dead horse.
- Imperative, positive - Look before you leap.
- Parallel phrases - Garbage in, garbage out.
- Rhetorical question - Is the Pope Catholic?
- Declarative sentence - Birds of a feather flock together.
However, people will often quote only a fraction of a proverb to invoke an entire proverb, e.g. "All is fair" instead of "All is fair in love and war", and "A rolling stone" for "A rolling stone gathers no moss."
Read more about this topic: Proverb
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