A Contrastive Study Of The Structures Of Chinese And English Idioms From A Language-character Relation Angle

This thesis is a systematic contrastive study of the structures of Chinese and English idioms mainly focusing on their differences from a language-character relation angle.The weak points existing in current contrastive study of Chinese and English idioms fall mainly into the following aspects: Firstly, the current study focuses on pure static structural description to attain practical objectives without considering other related elements, especially the counteraction of the character which has recorded idioms. It is impossible for idioms to be studied in the relationship between character and language, since they are usually taken as a pure language phenomenon. Secondly, the outline of the contrastive analysis is usually based on English idioms, and it is unavoidable that some characteristics of Chinese idioms have been covered unconsciously. Thirdly, some studies have also realized the influence existing in the idioms exerted by character, but they still need a conscious and systematic theoretical generalization.To counter these weak points, mainly using inductive method, statistic method, contrastive method and descriptive method the following work has been done in this thesis: Theoretically, based on Semiotics theory, we try to promote the change from a pure static structural description method to a method of studying in the relationship between character and language. During the contrastive analysis, attention is paid to generality as well as to difference. When the character-property or language-property of some respect of the structure of Chinese or English idioms has been concluded, this thesis will usually explain at the same time that character-property and language-property are basic coexisting characteristics of language signs. In therespect of content, this thesis mainly studies different Language- character Property tendency of the structure of Chinese and English idioms, with the premise that the two structures both have character-property and language-property at the same time because they are both presented by characters. This paper compares the structures of Chinese and English idioms systematically in basic unit, phonology and prosody, grammar and semantic, and has acquired a series of relative characteristics, being "character unit" and "word unit"; non-linearity and linearity; parataxis and hypotaxis; coacervation and combination, and at last we have summarized them into relative character-property of the structure of Chinese idioms and relative language-property of the structure of English idioms.The thesis has both theoretical value and practical value. Theoretically, based on Semiotics theory, it tries to put forward a new idiom -study theory, that is to study idioms by always considering the relationship between character and language. This theory is not only a try to give a conscious and systematic theoretical generalization to the former study on the relationship between character and idioms , but also a positive inspiration for the study of the two languages and even the general linguistics. At the same time, this kind of systematic structural analysis will help us better understand idioms and the two languages, which will of course improve our language study. Practically, this study also has some value in guiding translation and second language idioms teaching practice in our country, especially the relationship viewpoint will give positive inspiration to the language teachers to help them to maintain a reasonable balanced relationship between character and language in class.