The Contrastive Research Of Chinese And English Idioms

This paper, drawing on the frame of Construction Grammar Theory, makes a reasonable explanation of the inheritance, Idioms which are widely used in human languages compose an important part and a nucleus element in the linguistic world, so it is of great significance to carry out the studies related and to fulfill their applied value. This paper, based on a comparative and contrastive perspective by following the standpoints held by the majority of scholars who work on contrastive researches of Chinese and English, makes a contrastive study on Chinese and English idioms. Starting with an overview of the respective status quo of the idiom studies of the two languages and its research objectives as well as its study purports, the paper makes an exploration into the similarities and differences between the idioms of both languages and proceeds to define the term of idioms of the two languages and analyze the characteristics in their formation, semantics and teaching Chinese as a foreign language. It is centered on a contrastive study on the formation styles, variations, the relationship between semantics and cultural motivation and the semantic evolution of the idioms in both languages and also covers the teaching of Chinese idioms to foreigners in an effort to achieve the purpose of mutual understanding, mutual learning and acceptance and full comprehension so as to bring in helps for a comprehensive improvement in the disciplinary studies and teachings of Chinese Grammar, rhetorics, translatology, pragmatics and cross-cultural communications.The paper falls into five parts. The first part includes the introduction and the literature review which elucidate the significance of the selected subject and the status quo of the studies related to the subject with the focus on finding out the linguistic rules through the linguistic research methods and thoughts.The second part mainly deals with the formation styles and variations in both Chinese and English idioms and diachronically examines and analyzes the styles of the idioms in an application to the grammatical theories, followed by an elaboration on semantic structure, grammatical structure and pragmatic conditions of the idioms in the two languages. The third part is centered on the study of the semantic traits and the semantic evolution of the idioms in Chinese and English languages so as to take on a thorough investigation into the cultural motivation of their idiomatic differences and present the background information related to the semantic differences.The fourth part largely rests on the discussion on the functions and values which the Chinese and English idioms exert on teaching Chinese as a foreign language with an emphasis on the importance of the learning idioms in the course of the second language acquisition and it ends with some suggestions put forward for overseas students on the ways of enhancing learning efficiency.The fifth part draws a conclusion for the whole paper.