SENTENCE STRUCTURE, POETIC FEATURE AND IMAGERY IN KAFA PROVERBS

Abstract

This study aims to identify the sentence structure, poetic feature and imagery in Kafa proverbs. The proverbs are analyzed using structural approach to folklore. The result of the study showed that the Kafa proverbs reflect the people’s socio-cultural view of the world. Kafa proverbs deal with various subject matters, and arise from historical, social and cultural environments and usually employed in everyday situations. They reflect, guide, maintain and promote the people’s accepted socio-cultural values. Structurally, Kafa proverbs are binary constructed although they are in the form of brief statement. Binary construction is a balancing division of proverbs into two parts to make them witty and artful. Thus, in their balancing relationships, the Kafa proverbs exhibit various formal and stylistic features. In this paper, these features are seen from the perspectives of poetic and sentence structures. Kafa proverbs contain balanced phrases as in poetry, subject and predicate as simple sentence, main and subordinate clauses as complex sentence and coordinate clauses as compound sentence. Moreover, the proverbs are known for their stylistic beauty and figurative decorations that give them dyeing effect.