Editing Proverb (section)

===Grammatical structures===
Proverbs in various languages are found with a wide variety of grammatical structures.<ref>See Mac Coinnigh, Marcas. Syntactic Structures in Irish-Language Proverbs. ''Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship'' 29, 95–136.</ref> In English, for example, we find the following structures (in addition to others):
* Imperative, negative – [[Flogging a dead horse|Don't beat a dead horse.]]
* Imperative, positive – [[wikt:if the shoe fits, wear it|If the shoe fits, wear it]]!
* 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."

The grammar of proverbs is not always the typical grammar of the spoken language. Elements are often moved around, to achieve rhyme or focus.<ref>Sebastian J. Floor. 2005. Poetic Fronting in a Wisdom Poetry Text: The Information Structure of Proverbs 7. ''Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages'' 31: 23–58.</ref>

Another type of grammatical construction is the [[wellerism]], a speaker and a quotation, often with an unusual circumstance, such as the following, a representative of a wellerism proverb found in many languages: "The bride couldn't dance; she said, 'The room floor isn't flat.'"<ref>p. 20, 21. Unseth, Peter, Daniel Kliemt, Laurel Morgan, Stephen Nelson, Elaine Marie Scherrer. 2017. Wellerism proverbs: Mapping their distribution. ''GIALens'' 11.3: [https://www.diu.edu/documents/gialens/Vol11-3/Unseth-WPs.pdf website]</ref>

Another type of grammatical structure in proverbs is a short dialogue:
* Shor/Khkas (SW Siberia): "They asked the camel, 'Why is your neck crooked?' The camel laughed roaringly, 'What of me is straight?'"<ref>p. 176. Roos, Marti, Hans Nugteren, Zinaida Waibel. 2006. Khakas and Shor proverbs and proverbial sayings. In ''Exploring the Eastern Frontiers of Turkic'', ed by Marcel Erdal and Irina Nevskaya, pp. 157–192. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.</ref>
* [[Armenian language|Armenian]]: "They asked the wine, 'Have you built or destroyed more?' It said, 'I do not know of building; of destroying I know a lot.'"<ref>p. 135. Sakayan, Dora. 1999. Reported and direct speech in proverbs: On Armenian dialogue proverbs. Proverbium 16: 303–324.</ref>
* Bakgatla (a.k.a. [[Tswana language|Tswana]]): "The thukhui jackal said, 'I can run fast.' But the sands said, 'We are wide.'" ([[Botswana]])<ref>p. 246. Mitchison, Naomi and Amos Kgamanyane Pilane. 1967. The Bakgatla of South-East Botswana As Seen through Their Proverbs. ''Folklore'' Vol. 78, No. 4: 241–268.</ref>
* [[Bambara language|Bamana]]: "'Speech, what made you good?' 'The way I am,' said Speech. 'What made you bad?' 'The way I am,' said Speech." (Mali)<ref>p. 221. Kone, Kasim. 1997.'' Bamana verbal art: An ethnographic study of proverbs''. PhD dissertation, Indiana University.</ref>

[[File:Ochsenfurt Hauptstraße 60 Schuster.jpg|thumb|"The cobbler should stick to his last" in German. It is also an old proverb in English, but now "[[last]]" is no longer known to many.]]