A Study Of Grammatical Fuction Of Common Chinese Idioms

To advanced learners who study Chinese as a foreign language, idioms are one of the difficulties they may come across. However, only some intensive studies were made on grammatical function of Chinese idioms.This thesis studies on grammatical function of common Chinese idioms selected from Chinese Proficiency Lexicon Levels Program and several textbooks in Chinese. An error analysis on grammatical function of these idioms is made first here, in an effort to testify the necessity of carrying out research on grammatical function of Chinese idioms. After that, these idioms are classified by gender and the frequencies of every idiom acting as a certain sentence element are also calculated here. A description of the grammatical function of these Chinese idioms is made in the main part of this thesis.The frequencies from the thesis show that the grammatical function of common Chinese idioms is almost equal to the grammatical function of Chinese words. One of the differences between them is that Chinese idioms can not be used as elastic as Chinese words in sentence structures. Some Chinese idioms can act as complete sentences because of their complicated meanings and structures.In the meantime, an analysis of some dictionaries of Chinese idioms is also made in this thesis. Most dictionaries of Chinese idioms do not mark the function of idioms. This situation will not help oversea students with their Chinese study.