Naturally, a combination of criteria should be taken into account but I am trying to include all relevant literature, be it quantitative, pragmatic, or semantic approaches. The goal is to have objective criteria and avoid the usual clash between prescriptivists who reject everything, and anti-prescriptivists who say that recurrent errors are just idiolects. I know that many idioms and phrases (e.g. I could care less vs I couldn't care less) have been debated but I am trying to work out a generic solution. Thanks a lot for your help.
Not sure whether this is exactly what you're looking for, but my former colleague Claudia Lückert has done (and still is doing) extensive research on American proverbs. If I remember correctly, one of the challenges involved in her research was to deal with slight variations of the proverbs. Perhaps her publications can help you find an answer.
You probably already know the French research on proverbs by Jean-Claude Anscombre and Georges Kleiber (present at ResearchGate). It would be a good idea to look in their work for answers to Your question.
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