The Study Of Chinese Idioms Meaning Evolution Case

Chinese idiom plays a significant role on bridging ancient Chinese and contemporary Chinese. It is an important and unique part of the Chinese vocabularies. Therefore, it becomes the watershed of the Philology, Linguistics and Applied Linguistics research.This paper gives a brief introduction about the fretful achievements on Chinese idiom study which focus on generality research, Chinese idiom dictionary compile and special subject paper research. We affirm the achievements as well as point out their limitations. For example, in the field of the meaning evolvement of the Chinese idiom, the previous studies just confined on synchronic description. They noticed the expansion, reduction as well as the transformation of the Chinese idiom'meaning, but failing to carry out the study on diachronic perspective, especially when it comes to the evolvement and the cause of change for the concrete idiom as well as mechanism of change of those that altered a lot in ancient and contemporary meaning.For those questions, it is hard for the common Chinese idiom dictionary compile to reflect the diachronic meaning evolvement of the Chinese idiom. All macroscopic linguistic researches should be based on the microcosmic language phenomenon. And for the idiom research, the case study is very necessary.Therefore, this paper chose twenty Chinese idioms from The Analects of Confucius, The Book of Songs and Zuozhuan as the case study to figure out the change of meaning of the Chinese idioms.In the case study, every idiom chosen would be investigated for its originality as well as the cause of the change in meaning In the investigation for the idiom's originality, we would cite some ancient scholar's explanations so as to understand it in a better way. In the study on the cause of the change in meaning, we would classify and analyze the meaning of each idiom so as to sort out the track of the evolvement.As for the cause of the meaning evolvement, society, people and language itself would contribute something to it. For example, the change of society as well as it custom, the development of human's cognition, the change of meaning and misunderstand or misuse of the idiom will all lead to idiom's meaning evolvement.We would point out the cause of meaning evolvement for every idiom. While in the case study, we would focus on the process of the meaning evolvement of the idiom.As for the mechanism of change of the meaning, we would summarize the result of the case study and integrate with the synchronic study and diachronic study to induce it. By doing so, we could figure out the motive and factor of the meaning evolvement of idiom in an internal as well as external way of language.There are five kinds of mechanism of change of the idiom's meaning.1. Transplant mechanism; 2. Extend mechanism; 3. Renew mechanism; 4. Lighten or enhance mechanism; 5. Survival of the fittest mechanism.This paper would illustrate the mechanism of change of the idiom's meaning from many perspectives by exemplification and analysis.Transplant mechanism refers to that one idiom's meaning transplants into other thing which shares something in common with it.There isn't any change in the form of the idiom, but the meaning.Extend mechanism is also a way to generate new meaning. And the new generated meaning is based on the vicinity relationship between the two idioms.There are two kinds of meaning evolvement:expansion and reduction.Renew mechanism refers to that the original meanings of one idiom couldn't meet the demands of people'communication, hence, people infuse some elements into it so as to get some new meanings.In order to achieve this goal, people reanalyze the grammar form of the idiom or renew its part of speech, pronunciation, format or emotional overtones.Lighten or enhance mechanism refers to that some elements in an idiom being enhanced while other lightened, due to some internal or external language factors, thus causing the meaning evolvement of the idiom. Survival of the fittest mechanism refers to that some meaning items of an idiom being retained while other deleted, according to their fit to people's communication demand.New grammar replaces the old one, thus generating new meaning and makes it into common use.In the part which discusses the meaning evolvement all samples are chosen either from the case study'idioms or those commonly used idioms. By doing so, we explain the cause for the meaning evolvement in a better way, for they could reflect the adaptability and summarization of the mechanisms in the idiom's meaning evolvement. Therefore, it becomes the prolongation and improvement for the case study and the essence of the paper.