'Verb-first' in proverbs and slogans : a German-based, contrastive approach

The present article discusses the productivity of the verb-first (= V1) conditional construction as a template for German proverbs in contrast with English Subject-Auxiliary Inversion (SAI), which has no corresponding potential. Special attention is paid to the “proverbiality by association” (“scheinbare Sprichwörtlichkeit”, W. Mieder) of certain commercial and political slogans, which relies, inter alia, on the function of V1 word order as a contextualisation cue in German. Borrowing Norrick’s notion of “p-grammar” (where “p” stands for “proverbial”), the concept of “p-constructicon” is introduced, and it is suggested that the p-constructica of different languages should be treated contrastively in future research under the theoretical framework of Social Construction Grammar.

ISBN:9781350079182

Publication year:2020

Accessibility:Closed