The proverb has been the subject of a vast number of opinions, studies and analyses. To accommodate the assorted possible audiences, this volume outlines seven views of the proverb - personal, formal, religious, literary, practical, cultural and cognitive. Because the author's goal is to provide a scientific understanding of proverb comprehension and production, he draws largely on scholarship stemming from the formal, cultural and cognitive views. This text attempts to provide a larger, more interdisciplinary perspective on the proverb, and to give a theoretically more integrated approach to...

The articles in this special issue focus on experimental psychological, neuropsychological, and computer-based approaches to figurative language, suggesting the enormous impact of cognitive science on our understanding of figurative language.
Where, exactly, does figurative language fit in the larger scheme of things? The basic thesis is that much of intelligent behavior partakes of indirectness -- layeredness, levels, embeddedness, and tangled hierarchies. Deficiencies in this respect, brought about by inabilities to build processing structures by using prior or old information, result...

SEE SHORT BLURB FOR ALTERNATE COPY... A complex, intriguing, and important verbal entity, the proverb has been the subject of a vast number of opinions, studies, and analyses. To accommodate the assorted possible audiences, this volume outlines seven views of the proverb -- personal, formal, religious, literary, practical, cultural, and cognitive. Because the author's goal is to provide a scientific understanding of proverb comprehension and production, he draws largely on scholarship stemming from the formal, cultural, and cognitive views.
The only book about proverbs that is written...