Typological Relations of Expression of Number in Russian and Georgian Proverbs

Abstract

The proverb is an inexhaustible treasure for linguistic research. Proverb - an expression of folk wisdom, a unique example of folk art, is an interesting material for typological research as grammatically complete sentence. Therefore, we aim to discuss numerical names in proverbs, in terms of productivity. The numerical name, in general, carries a sacral load in the tales of all people. Russian fairy-tales: "Четыре желания"; "Семь подземных королей";  "Два Ивана"; Georgian - Aspurtsela, Foreign Tales: The Adventures of Four Brothers, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Three Oranges, Ali Baba and Forty thieves, etc. For the study we relied on descriptive methods of statistical analysis; Numerical nouns are generally part of a peculiar expression, so much so that the affiliation of a word with numerical nouns is considered by linguists to be a formality based on semantics rather than grammar. The study confirmed that in Russian and Georgian proverbs some of them are more actively used from numerical and ordinal numbers. If the differences of opinion between linguists about the numerical name had not been reflected in the results of our research, we would have relied mainly on definitions of academic grammar in both languages. As a result of our research we can conclude that from the quantitative, ordinal names of numerical names in Russian and Georgian proverbs some typological peculiarities are observed.