ÉTUDE CONTRASTIVE DES PROVERBES NÉGATIFS EN ROUMAIN ET EN FRANÇAIS

In this study, we propose a contrastive analysis of negative proverbs in Romanian   and French, focusing on the position and type of negation (propositional, constituent, quantifier), on the distribution of universal and indefinite quantifiers, as well as on the so-called “partitive” semantic reading that characterizes a significant number of proverbial statements. Another objective is to highlight certain syntactic regularities observed in Romanian paremiology, to analyze them in detail, and then to examine, within a comparative perspective (Romanian–French), whether these structures have correspondences in French and what significant variations emerge from them.

Within the framework of contrastive research, negative proverbs constitute a particularly fertile ground, not only in terms of linguistic similarities and differences, but also with regard to cultural representations and pragmatic uses. This work presents an extended selection of Romanian proverbs introduced by negation (e.g. nu, cine nu…, dacă nu…), associated with their closest French equivalents. Each proverb is accompanied by a literal word-for-word translation, intended to illustrate the syntactic structure, and followed by an explanatory commentary in French, designed to shed light on semantic and cultural nuances.

Furthermore, the study discusses the phenomena of formal variation and proverbial synonymy, showing that diversity of expression does not necessarily alter the semantic identity of a proverb. The objective is therefore twofold: on the one hand, to describe the formal and pragmatic regularities that structure negative paremiology in Romanian and French, and on the other hand, to highlight the translational and didactic implications (particularly in the teaching of French as a foreign language) that arise from these correspondences and differences.