A Corpus-based Study Of Using Frequencies Of Chinese And English Idioms

Idioms, widely recognized as the crystallization of language, hold an important position in language use. Currently, many linguists have carried out extensive researches on idioms. Some western linguists study them from the semantic perspective (e.g. Makkai), some from the syntactic perspective (e.g. Fraser, Nunberg, Katz and Postal), and some others concentrate on the functional use of idioms (e.g. Fernando). In China, there are also many scholars studying idioms. Some study the cultural and linguistic characteristics of idioms, some study the formation and sources of idioms, and some make a comparative study of English and Chinese idioms. All these studies and researches have made great achievements, while at the same time, there are also some defects and imperfections in them. The fact lie mainly in that although studies on idioms from various perspectives have been carried out, each of them only accounts for a qualitative analysis, and a thorough study covering large quantity and variety of data has seldom been conducted.During the process of idioms study, the author finds that the Chinese idiom carries a long cultural tradition and is widely used on various occasions. However, English speakers'tendency to use idioms is significantly lower than that of Chinese people, English idioms are mainly recorded in the dictionaries or rhetoric books, and very few are used in the serious discourses (such as speeches and addresses, government papers, editorials or articles to discuss social issues, etc.). The differences of the using frequency between these two peoples and reasons deserve in-depth studies.On the basis of assimilating the accomplishments of previous studies, this thesis first selects this topic based mainly on two dictionaries of idioms: Collins COBUILD Idiom Dictionary and Chinese Idiom Dictionary, from which 100 English idioms and 100 Chinese idioms are randomly sampled respectively. Then this study adopts a new approach—the corpus-based approach, combined with statistical, deductive, contrastive and descriptive methods, to count idiom frequency and analyze reasons for the differences between English and Chinese idioms in quantitative and qualitative perspectives, respectively.The present study is carried out to explore the following questions.(1) Do the randomly sampled English idioms share the same using frequency with Chinese ones?(2) What are the main causes of the difference between English idioms and Chinese idioms in using frequency?(3) What are the implications for the contrastive study of English idioms and Chinese idioms?By analyzing the randomly sampled data, the author illustrates that the using frequency of Chinese idioms is significantly higher than the English ones. In addition, the possible explanations for the result are: First of all, modern Chinese are mainly double-syllable words. Chinese idioms, a vast majority of which contain two double-syllable words, function equally as words. By contrast, English idioms are composed of a group of two or more associated words. The structure of English idioms is so complicated that they can not perform as freely as Chinese idioms do. Secondly, the grammatical functions the Chinese idioms acting are richer than what we can imagine. One idiom can be used for different sentence constituents. These constituents can function as either counterparts of English idioms or a short sentence. Compared with the Chinese idioms, English idioms merely undertake limited grammatical functions. Thirdly, Chinese people have been accustomed to using four-character structures for long to pursue the elegant and ornate style of the language. Chinese idioms, symmetric and parallel in structure are perfectly accord with Chinese people's traditional favor of wording habit. By contrast, such four-character structures are rarely found in English idioms, whose components are in a wide range between two words and sentences. In addition, the different modes of thinking between the two nations also contribute to the diversities in using frequency between Chinese and English idioms.This study is attempted to account for an in-depth analysis of idioms, getting at the essence of the matter—the causes that make the diversities in using frequency between Chinese and English idioms. The significance lies in that through this study, we can have a profound and objective understanding of the characteristics and usages of idioms. Furthermore, we can improve the English learners'cross-culture competence and have a brand new perspective for the idiom study.