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Journal of Universal Language
Sejong University Language Research Institue

J. Univers. Lang. 2008; 9(1):61-90

pISSN: 1598-6381

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22425/jul.2008.9.1.61

Article

The Structure and Texture of English Translations of Yorùbá and Igbo Proverbs

Mufutau Temitayo Lamidi1
1University of Ibadan

Copyright ⓒ 2016, Sejong University Language Research Institue. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jan 01, 2017

Abstract

Every culture has its rules of interaction and interpretation, and each also has rules for proverb construction and usage. As a literary genre, proverbs in Yorùbá and Igbo do possess some features that identify them in their areas of usage. These we explore in this paper with particular emphasis on the structure and the texture that proverbs share in the two languages. With data collected from literary works and scholarly publications of Yorùbá and Igbo scholars, this study reveals that proverbs in the two languages have identical structure and texture with few optional items on both sides. This study concludes that proverbs probably have universal structures and textures as found in the two cultures.

Keywords: proverbs; intertextuality; genre; Igbo; Yorùbá; structure; texture

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