| Idioms are the crystals of a language. Proper use of idioms makes one's speech or writing more colorful, vivid and precise. In English learning, acquisition of idioms is an essential task. This is because a good mastery of idioms enhances expressions of a language. It is also an index for the mastery of a language. However, it is a difficult task. Idioms always pose a problem to non-native language learners in their comprehension and application. Therefore, it is necessary to make more researches on English idioms for a fuller understanding.Idioms have already aroused linguists' curiosity due to their special features and particular functions in language. And there is a long history in studies on idioms. Generally speaking, there are two views on this subject, that is, the traditional view and the cognitive view. Traditionally, idioms are regarded as "dead metaphors" and they are noncompositional in nature, which emphasizes arbitrariness of idiomatic meanings. Linguists who hold this view say that idioms are independent of human conceptual system and they are linguistic in nature. Their views are based on objectivism. Objectivism claims that reason is abstract and "disembodied" or "transcendental": it exists independently of an individual and is thus not determined by his/her properties. Knowledge is mainly prepositional and is objectively true or false, meaning being a matter of direct correspondence of a concept to the outer world. Therefore, language is regarded as an autonomous component of the mind, independent, in principle, from other kinds of knowledge and from other cognitive skills. As one form of language, idioms are similarly independent of human conceptual system and they are noncompositional in this view.In contrast, cognitive linguistics takes a new approach to idioms. Cognitive linguistics is a branch of cognitive science and combination of cognitive psychology and linguistics. Cognitive linguists hold the view that idioms are...
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