Voir dist li vilains

Medieval French proverbs are often introduced by characteristic structures, which we study here from a polyphonic and semantic point of view. These evidential markers include a speech verb and concern the sources of the proverb, the person or entity to whom the information is attributed : l’en dit que ; li vilains dit an son respit que, etc..

However, the proverb is not necessarily introduced by a marker. The proverb as such has its origin in traditional wisdom and this feature is characteristic of its semantics. The utterance of a proverb always includes, in an explicit or implicit way, a marker such as on sait que, on dit que, voirs est que which is an integral part of the proverb. The actual presence of the marker only stresses an intrinsic property of the proverb: it mentions the multiple previous utterances of the same sentence, it refers to a consensual wisdom linked to a linguistic community.