The Syntax of Yoruba Proverbs
Yorùbá people relish in interspersing their utterances with proverbs. Hardly can a typical Yorùbá man or woman utter three sentences without putting in a proverb. Hence, Yorùbá say: ‘Òwelẹṣinọ̀ rọ̀ ,ọ̀ rọ̀ lẹṣinòwe, bọ́ rọ̀ bá sọnù, òwe la fi n ́ wa’ translated to mean that ‘proverb is the vehicle through which issues are resolved. However, Yoruba proverbs are not just strung together haphazardly; they follow some particular syntactic rules of the grammar of the language. These syntactic rules give some aesthetic values to proverbs usage in the languge. This paper is set to discuss the various syntactic forms that many of the Yorùbá proverbs manifest. We also look at the implication of the syntactic rules upon which these proverbs are hinged and how these rules are applied to structures to conform to the wellformedness condition of Yoruba grammatical sentences
