American Contributions to the 14th International Congress of Slavists. Ohrid 2008

On the Classification of Macedonian Proverbs in an Electronic Database

Christina Y. Bethin, ed. American Contributions to the 14th International Congress of Slavists, Ohrid, September 2008. Vol. 1: Linguistics. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 197–210. On the Classification of Macedonian Proverbs in an Electronic Database George Mitrevski As linguistic constructs, proverbs are characterized by rigidity of form and complicated structure. As phenomena of folklore, proverbs are oral in nature and are easily spread in a number of variants and adaptations in variety of languages and cultures. As metaphoric constructs, proverbs can also be found in literary texts and in the visual arts. Although proverbs traditionally have been collected, classified, and studied by folklorists and paremiologists, they have also been an object of research by literary scholars, linguists, sociologists, ethnologists, philosophers, and educators. The research on a body of proverbs is often limited by the format in which they have been compiled, classified, and presented. An essential question for the compiler is, how should proverbs be systematized and classified so that they can be studied comparatively and as objects of interest to scholars in seemingly disparate fields and in a multitude of languages and cultures? This paper describes a system for compiling a database of Macedonian proverbs using the technology of a standard relational database management system and a set of thematic and linguistic classification systems that can reveal information and the characteristics of proverbs on the formal, structural, linguistic, and figurative levels. Unlike a flat database, a relational database is organized into tables, in which data is defined so that it can be reorganized and accessed in a number of different ways. It is a method of structuring data in the form of records, so that relations between different entities and attributes can be used for data access and transformation. Using structured query language, reports and comparisons can be generated by selecting fields of interest from the original database. Paremiologists agree that the classification of proverbs by any criteria is a complex question, and no comprehensive and acceptable solution has been offered to date. Each type of classification has its own validity, its own practical uses, and also its drawbacks. In any undertaking to classify proverbs there are issues of selection and organization that need to be resolved to make the collection as useful and as easy to consult as possible, while keeping in mind space considerations and the economics of publishing. An attempt to compile an exhaustive publication of proverbs encounters the additional issue of proverb variants and equivalents. Permiakov (1978) warns that 198 GEORGE MITREVSKI the field of paremiology cannot progress until it resolves the root question of proverb classification. Proverb scholarship thus far has proposed classifications that are often designed to accomplish one specific purpose, and in the process they disregard characteristics of proverbs that are irrelevant to that purpose, but which may be relevant for some other approach. Permiakov was mostly interested in the shaping of logical thought in proverbs, and while he had no ready comprehensive classification system to propose, he felt that such a classification is possible in principle. It is my contention that the essence of the problem of proverb classification lies in the very approach or methodology of constructing a classification system itself. Traditionally, proverbs have been collected and classified in a form that is appropriate for publishing in book format. The publication medium itself, with its linear access format and its economic limitation on the number of proverbs that can be included, imposes a limit on the types of classifications that can be implemented. This format excludes the possibility of constructing a multi-dimensional classification system that can be applied to an infinite number of proverbs and variants, in an infinite number of languages and dialects, from an infinite number of sources and locations, which may produce an infinite number of linguistic, thematic, structural, and many other kinds of relations among them. The various types of proverbs and the complicated linguistic structures and the semantic relations among proverbs are not easily made evident in a standard printed compilation. In developing a database of Macedonian proverbs, we turned to the relational database model and the logical data modeling approach to develop a multidimensional classification system that takes into consideration the poly-functionality of proverbs and the disparate approaches to their study. We use a design methodology that is a structured approach for discovering, analyzing, and modeling a set of requirements in a standardized, organized manner. A relational database, when designed and implemented appropriately, can support a wide variety of access patterns. Users can...