Nuosu proverbs

Abstract

Much scholarship has looked at the uses, functions, and originsof proverbs. This study describes the form of proverbs in Nuosu, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in southwest China. A preliminary analysisdemonstrates that the carefully crafted form of Nuosu proverbs reflectsintricate artistry and multiple aesthetic features of the Nuosu language,making their proverbs memorable and transmissible across generations.One unusual feature of Nuosu proverbs to surface in the study is frequentnegative polarity. Findings from this study provide a deeper understandingof the Nuosu language, as well as a window into linguistic aestheticfeatures shared with languages in the region and beyond. The researchadds to our understanding of the breadth of strategies that languages employin order to animate discourse.