Strategies For Representing English Idiom Variation In English-chinese Learner’s Dictionaries

As a vigorous part of the English vocabulary, idioms are characterized bysemantic unity and structural stability. Nevertheless, idiom variation is also a featureof English idioms, which makes the acquisition of English idioms even more difficultfor EFL learners. English-Chinese learner’s dictionaries, as one of the major referencesources for Chinese EFL learners, are expected to include idioms and provideinformation about idiom variation and idiom variants. Unfortunately, so far there havebeen very few researches on the representation of English idioms and their variants inthe dictionary.In order to fill the gap, this thesis analyzes idiom variation from the perspectiveof cognitive grammar, and develops systematic strategies for optimizing therepresentation of idiom variants based on the survey of how idiom variants arerepresented in existing popular ECLDs. Specifically, an analysis of English idiomvariation is made first to explore the cognitive motivation behind idiom variation andthe constraints on idiom variation. Based on the analysis, the taxonomy of idiomvariation and idiom variants is established. Then, a corpus-based contrastive analysisand a questionnaire survey are conducted to reveal Chinese EFL learners’ difficultiesin acquiring English idioms and their variants.The results indicate that usual variants have higher frequency counts, and thevariants created by topic-indicating modification follow certain variation patterns. Thestudy suggests that it is beneficial and feasible to represent both of the two types ofvariants in ECLDs. It is found that Chinese EFL learners have difficulty in acquiringEnglish idioms, especially idiom variants. While they can identify idioms and theirvariants in the context, they tend to avoid using difficult idioms, including theirvariants. The survey of the three selected popular ECLDs shows that there is stillroom for improvement in the representation of idioms and idiom variants in learner’sdictionaries.These findings lead to the development of the strategies for representing idiom variation and idiom variants in ECLDs. The samples provided prove that therepresentation of idiom variants in ECLDs can be implemented, systematically andspecifically, in the macrostructure, microstructure, and mediostructure of thedictionary, not only in definitions and examples, but also in labels, tips and by takingadvantage of highlighting techniques.