Sarah Gimenez has defended a thesis entitled: Edition critique du proverbier manuscrit d’I.S. Révah (judéo-espagnol – Salonique, 1936).
Jury : M. C. Bornes Varol (director), Alessandro Guetta PU Inalco, Stéphane Sawas PU Inalco (President), Paloma Díaz Mas PU CSIC Madrid, Alexandra Oddo Bonnet PU Paris-Nanterre (evaluator 1), Eric Beaumatin PU Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Ana Stulic MCF, Bordeaux Montaigne ; (evaluator 2: Victor Ivanovici PU émérite, Univ. de Thessalonique)
Summary
The proverbial manuscript of Professor I.S. Révah is a collection of Judeo-Spanish proverbs that has remained unpublished in the archives of the U.I.A. It consists of 1601 units collected by him in Salonika in 1936. It is above all as a linguist that I.S. Révah, himself a Judeo-Spanish speaker and originally from Salonika, has focused on pointing out the phonetic characteristics of the Salonician language. This dialect variety and its notation have been the subject of controversy between linguists C.M. Crews and J-P. Vinay.
The proverb collection of I.S. Revah has for particularity the description of the popular speech of the Judeo-Spanish of Salonika on the eve of the disappearance of this community. It is a witness to the oral culture of the latter days of this community and, for this reason, presents notable differences with other proverbial sayings, including salonicians after the Shoah. It has very diverse units, many variations and 80 undocumented proverbs.
This critical edition examines the author’s biases, reconsiders the terms of the linguistic polemic and identifies the markers of the Salonician dialect. In the absence of any gloss by the author, the critical edition establishes the meaning (literal and figurative) of the proverbs and traces, as far as possible, their origin and development.
Key words list :Judeo-Spanish dialectology (Ladino), Salonika, paremiology, proverbs, Judeo-Spanish culture
