The Comparative Study On Four-character Idioms’definition Of Chong Bian And Xion Han

Based on the idiom’s importance and the Cross-Strait’s plan of cooperating to compile dictionary, this paper selects the Mainland and Taiwan’s authoritative and comprehensive Chinese dictionary Chong Bian and Xian Han to comparative and analysis their530four-character idioms’ definitions. The definitions contrast mainly include the coverage of meaning components, the selection of definition feature words, the etymology’s exegesis and the selection of words’ use-case. By comparison, we can discover the differences between the two dictionaries’ way of definition, then we can also find the reasons of the differences.In terms of the coverage of meaning components, Chong Bian records the idioms’ origin, original meaning and literal meaning while Xian Han just records their popular meaning mostly, in addition, the way of referring definition also has discrepancy. In terms of the selection of definition feature words, Chong Bian tends to choose the "metaphor", but it has some mistakes, Xian Han tends to bypass the feature words. In the terms of etymology’s exegesis, the whole530four-character idioms in Chong Bian record the etymology, while141in Xian Han, moreover, their etymology in Chong Bian are more detailed than in Xian Han. In terms of the words’ use-case,90percent of the530four-character idioms in Chong Bian show the words’ use-case, while6percent in Xian Han,the difference not only exists in the quantity, but also the use-cases’ type, the former tends to choose the classical use-case, the latter essays use-case.The direct cause of the differences is that the rules of the four aspects which Chong Bian and Xian Han follows are different. The root cause is that the two dictionaries’ characteristics are different, the former is a synchronic and diachronic, standardized and descriptive dictionary, the latter is synchronic and standardized, besides, the former’s size is bigger than latter. The difference between the Cross-Strait’s demand of Chinese and the Chinese’ environment, which leads to the difference that Chong Bian emphasizes on succession and language origins while Xian Han emphasizes on standard and practicability, is the historical and era reason for the difference.The innovation lies in this article is that the research corpus is new and overall, the comparative analysis of the corpus is exhaustive, and it presents a partitioning method of meaning components which is line with idioms’meaning. The research significance focuses on three areas, they are deepening the study of idioms in the comprehensive Chinese dictionary, expanding the study of the Cross-Strait’s dictionary, promoting the Cross-Strait’s plane of co-editing dictionary to further develop and improve.