Abstract
Proverbs are among the most fascinating linguistic phenomena that transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries. Yet, much of the global landscape of proverbs remains underexplored, as many cultures preserve their traditional wisdom within their own communities due to the oral tradition of the phenomenon. Taking advantage of the current advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP), we focus on Greek proverbs, analyzing their sentiment. Departing from an annotated dataset of Greek proverbs, we expand it to include local dialects, effectively mapping the annotated sentiment. We present (1) a way to exploit LLMs in order to perform sentiment classification of proverbs, (2) a map of Greece that provides an overview of the distribution of sentiment, (3) a combinatory analysis in terms of the geographic position, dialect, and topic of proverbs. Our findings show that LLMs can provide us with an accurate enough picture of the sentiment of proverbs, especially when approached as a non-conventional sentiment polarity task. Moreover, in most areas of Greece negative sentiment is more prevalent.
Abstract (translated)
谚语是跨越文化和语言界限的最迷人的语言现象之一。然而，全球谚语图景中的许多部分仍然未被充分探索，因为许多文化由于这种现象的传统口头传统，将它们的传统智慧保存在自己的社区内。利用当前自然语言处理（NLP）领域的进展，我们专注于希腊谚语，并对其情感进行分析。基于一个已标注的希腊谚语数据集，我们将该数据集扩展到包括地方方言，从而有效地绘制了情感标注图。 我们提出了以下内容： 1. 利用大型语言模型(LLMs)来执行谚语的情感分类； 2. 一张展示希腊各地情感分布的地图； 3. 结合地理位置、方言和话题进行的组合分析。 我们的研究发现表明，LLM可以为我们提供足够准确的谚语情感画面，特别是在将其视为非传统的情感极性任务时。此外，在希腊的大部分地区，负面情绪更为普遍。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13341
