Idiom Information In The Microstructure In English-Chinese Learner's Dictionaries: An Empirical Study Based On User Perspective

Idioms are indispensable to every language; they are not only significant constituents of the lexicon but also the essence of culture carrier in a language. Whether idioms are dealt with appropriately not only relates to the description of idioms themselves but also influences the quality of the whole dictionaries. Although contemporary researchers are deepening their studies on idioms, practical researches are still rarely seen on the following topics: what idiom information is treated unsatisfactorily in current English-Chinese learner's dictionaries and how to present it. In the thesis the author will discuss five types of idiom information which are not dealt perfectly in current ECLDs: phonological information, information of syntactic function, collocation information, other grammatical information and pragmatic information of idioms. Detailed comparison on the treatment of those five types of idiom information among the Big5 and two China-made ECLDs will be made in this thesis, and this thesis, from the user perspective, explores the real needs of the intermediate-advanced English learners in China in those five types of idiom information, and at last proposes suggestions on the ways to present them in ECLDs.