A Study On Meaning Of Chinese Tetrasyllabic Idioms

Tetrasyllabic idioms in Chinese were formed in the thousands of years’ evolution. The meaning, i.e., the information they convey, was created to convey information, so as to satisfy communicating need. Their nature can be understood exactly only through multispectral exploration. Therefore, the aim of the current study consists of several important aspects: the formation of a tetrasyllabic idioms, their evolution and their interpretation.2,598 items of tetrasyllabic idiom were chosen to be the object of the current study, and combining semantic comparison, quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis, the author analyzes their formation and inter relationship, generalizes the types tetrasyllabic idioms evolve, summarizes their evolutionary motives and mechanisms, and related issues.The dissertation consists of ten chapters.The first chapter is the introduction, which sketches the object, significance, status, methodology, theoretical framework, data resources and rationale.The second chapter analyzes the formation of tetrasyllabic idioms. The main task of this chapter is to clarify the formation of idioms’ meaning and their relationships, getting prepared for the following discussion.Chapter Three generalizes the evolution of idiomatic meaning. Through statistics, we get the proportion, result, direction, and type of idiomatic meaning evolution.Chapter Four to Six focus on the tetrasyllabic idioms that have two interpretations from a diachronic way, exploring their evolutionary process, cause and characters from meaning to meaning, from form to meaning, and from meaning to form respectively.Chapter Seven mainly discusses the evolutionary process, cause and characters of those tetrasyllabic idioms that have multiple interpretations diachronically.Chapter Eight summarizes the evolutionary motives and mechanisms of tetrasyllabic idioms. The motives include linguistic factors and external factors. Linguistic factors is constituted with semantic extension, characters of Chinese vocabulary, and factors such as rhetoric, prosody, grammar, etc. external factors include social and thinking. The mechanisms include implicit theory, mental lexicon, economic principle, etc.Chapter Nine focuses on the interpretation of tetrasyllabic idioms. On the basis of the discussions in previous chapters, the chapter put forward some interpreting principles, including interpreting ways, interpretation of the components and interpreting indicating words and sememes.Chapter Ten is the conclusion of the research and some suggestions for further studies.Main points of innovationFirst, 2,598 items of tetrasyllabic idioms from five dictionaries are studied. On the basis of their meaning, we classify their components, clarify their interrelationships and endeavors to demonstrate the componential relations of idiomatic meanings.Second, three types of evolution are distinguished, that is, from meaning to meaning, from form to meaning, and from meaning to form. All the evolutionary process, cause and characters are analyzed, and their evolutionary motives and mechanisms are generalized.Third, on the basis of detailed analysis, the interpretation of idioms are discussed. We especially explored the interpretation revision of sixth edition of Contemporary Chinese Dictionary on the basis of the fifth edition...