A Contrastive Research on the Definitions and Categories of Chinese and English Idioms

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210519.083How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Chinese idioms, English idioms, definition, classification, comparison between Chinese and English

Abstract

Chinese and English belong to Sino-Tibetan language family and Indo-European language family respectively. There are according differences between the idioms of the two languages. The definition and classification of Chinese and English idioms have always been the focus of debate in academic circles. This study, through the comparison of definitions and categories between Chinese and English idioms, comes to the conclusion that the classification of Chinese idioms emphasizes the semantic and pragmatic features of the targets. Chinese idioms can be roughly divided into idioms, proverbs, common sayings, two-part allegorical sayings and aphorisms. On the contrary, the classification of English idioms focuses on syntactic structure. Thus English idioms are divided into eight categories: sentence idioms, semi-sentence idioms, verbal phrases, prepositional phrases, nominal idioms, adjective idioms, paired words and fixed similes.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - You Wang
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/05/20
TI  - A Contrastive Research on the Definitions and Categories of Chinese and English Idioms
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 423
EP  - 426
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210519.083
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210519.083
ID  - Wang2021
ER  -