The Research Of The Idiomatic Phrases In The Red Dream Of Mansion

As a marvelous colloquial novel of Qing Dynasty in China, The Red Dream of Mansion gains the high language achievements. The numerous idiomatic phrases in this novel which are full of vitality and its features reflect the contemporary language characteristics to a large degree. On the base of the collection and sorting out the idiomatic phrases in it, this thesis aims to describe and analyze the characteristics about 220 idiomatic phrases (with the exception of repetition) in The Red Dream of Mansion by comparison, statistics and cognition, and attempt to explore the law of evolution of the idiomatic phrases through temporal comparison.Regarded as the saying which is in parallel with idioms, idiomatic phrases play an important role in vocabulary units. However, the great divergence about the definition of idiomatic phrases still exists so far. Therefore, the introduction focuses to analyze and contrast the present situation about the research of the idiomatic phrases and define make a definition that idiomatic phrases, one kind of the regular phrases, are vocabulary units made up of two or more than two words, whose elements and structures are relevantly fixed and whose meaning can describe the entirety. Then, idiomatic phrases are distinguished from idioms according to structures and from proverbs according to semantics.The second chapter does some analysis about the main source and characteristics of structures to the idiomatic phrases in The Red Dream of Mansion. The materials collected shows that the idiomatic phrases in The Red Dream of Mansion owns broad source, including numerous social and historical phrases. Contrast also shows that the language inherited from dramas and novels in Yuan, Ming and the early Qing Dynasty is the fundamental source of the idiomatic phrases in The Red Dream of Mansion, in addition that a part of the phrases are from the contemporary social language.Because of the complicated structures of the idiomatic phrases in The Red Dream of Mansion, the structures of the idiomatic phrases are divided into two kinds --- the structures of single language unit (单语节)and double language unit (双语节)--- in this thesis for convenient analysis. Furthermore, the former includes phrase-pattern and sentence-pattern. The latter involves those of parallel units and those of non-parallel units. It is proved statistically that the single language units in The Red Dream of Mansion are more than the double ones. Among them, most are phrase-patterns. Moreover, it is showed phonetically that idiomatic phrases of polysyllables (esp. trio-syllables and six-syllables) are used frequently.The third chapter mainly contributes to the analysis of the semantics and figures of speeches to the idiomatic phrases in The Red Dream of Mansion. On one hand, this chapter does some research to the semantics of the phrases according to the traditionally literal meaning and practical meaning. On the other hand, the construction of the meaning of the idiomatic phrases is studied for the first step according to the theory of conceptual integration cognitively, and it is showed that idiomatic phrases are the saying units with higher class of conceptual integration. It is...