On the Morphology of Proverbs in Afrikaans and Dutch

Afrikaans, being very closely related to Dutch, inherited from Dutch not only almost all its vocabulary, but also numerous phraseologisms and proverbs. Then, due to the process of deflection, its morphological system was radically simplified. The very paper, applying a morphology-oriented research perspective, discusses the way in which Afrikaans proverbs differ from Dutch proverbs. The research material of the study is based upon Anton F. Prinsloo’s Spreekwoorde en waar hulle vandaan kom (Kaapstad 2005). This dictionary was chosen to conduct the study because of the fact that it contains a representative collection of proverbs and phraseologisms of the contemporary Afrikaans language. The research under discussion is limited to Afrikaans adages that derive from Dutch. The method of the analysis is a comparative one. Afrikaans proverbs are compared with their Dutch equivalents.