A Contrastive Study On Animal Idioms In Chinese And Vietnamese

Animal idioms is an indispensable part of both Chinese and Vietnamese idioms, and theirnumber is quite a lot. Because they borrow the image of the animal to express their meaning, sothat the figurative meaning are shown both lively and profoundly, the cultural connotation ofanimal idioms is both strong and distinctive. Examining from the cultural point of view, thecontrast on the animals in the Chinese and Vietnamese idioms will help to reveal the culturaldifferences or similarities between China and Vietnam, especially the cognitive and emotionalvalues of the two peoples on the image of the animal. On the other hand, examining from theteaching point of view, contrastive analysis on the characteristics of animal idioms in Chinese andVietnamese will identify similarities and differences on the structure and semantic representationbetween them, that can give meaning to the work of teaching Chinese Idioms or VietnameseIdioms.This dissertation is based on defining the concept of the "Animal Idioms", from twodictionaries: the "Modern Chinese Idioms Dictionary” which was published by the CommercialPress and the “Vietnamese idioms, sayings, songs Dictionary" which was published byVietnamese Dong Nai Publishing, It collected631Chinese Animal Idioms and649VietnameseAnimal Idioms. Use them as studying corpus, continue to explore the origin of Chinese Idiomsand Vietnamese Idioms, analyse the statistics of the type and frequency of the image of theanimals, which were used in two languages，observe the number of syllables in Chinese AnimalIdioms and Vietnamese Idioms. Then, The focus shifted to comparative analysis on the internalstructure of Animal Idioms in Chinese and Vietnamese. In this section, the dissertation classifiedthe Animal Idioms at first and then perform structural analysis according to the characteristics ofeach sub-categories, as such:(1) with Animal Idioms simile, this section mainly analyse thestructural relations of " Compared Object "," Comparison Word”,“Comparative Object”;(2)with Animal Idioms for non-simile, the focus is on the phrase structure whether it issymmetrical or not, and the use of modern Chinese grammar structural analysis to organize thestructure of categories of animal idioms. In addition, the paper contrast the semantic of animalidioms in Chinese and Vietnamese, to find the corresponding relations of the Chinese AnimalIdioms and Vietnamese Animal Idioms, and summarized as follows: full correspondence, partcorrespondence, unable correspondence. Finally, contrast on the cultural connotation of animal images and used the cultural background to reflect on animal idiom in Chinese and Vietnamese.Thus to further understand China and Vietnam cultural commonality and individuality.