英语习语非稳定性结构特征研究Study on Instability Structure of English Idioms [5]
论文作者:佚名论文属性:短文 essay登出时间:2009-04-10编辑:刘宝玲点击率:13991
论文字数:26000论文编号:org200904101651052981语种:中文 Chinese地区:中国价格:免费论文
关键词:English idiomsinstability structuregrammatical changelexical changesemantic change英语习语非稳定性结构语法变化词法变化语义变化
itate), to no avail (useless), like a breeze (easily) and so on (Zhang, 1999).
The semantic unity of idioms is also reflected in the illogical relationship between the literal meaning of each word and the meaning of the idiom. Many idioms are semantically inexplicable. For example, how do you do is a common form of greeting used by people when they first meet. Literally it means ‘in what way do you do things’, which is far from its idiomatic usage. From this we can know that the key to master the idiom is to master its features not each words’ meaning. Here we can have more examples; He can not tell the manager off, so he takes it out on the office boy. In the sentence tell off and take it out on sb are two idioms their meaning are different in the usual sentence. In addition, some idiom often borrows from some culture and custom that will be more different to understand it in the usual ways. Semantic unity is an important feature in the understanding of idioms.
B. Figurativeness
A well-known language phenomenon or word may have many comparison meanings in the specific condition, especially the metaphor. English idiom belongs to this type naturally; many idioms have the metaphor meanings, i.e. hat in hand, beat about the bush, and bum the candle at bath ends and so on. Although the meaning of these idioms mainly depend on the unity, we can guess the meaning from its literal. This can make us have some imagination. Other examples: to wash one’s dirty linen in public, to carry coals to Newcastle even Homer sometimes nods. The literal meaning of these idioms are easy understood, all of these meanings have some connection with its real ones if we do some discursion it will be very clear. Such
idioms are very popular in our daily life i.e. hit the nail on the head, a storm in a cup, fine feathers make fine birds, keep one’s chin up, wash one’s off something, make one’s hair stand on end. For the meaning of an idiom, we had better put it in the specific sentence.
C. Peculiarity
Peculiarity can be found in two conditions. One is un- logicality; many idioms in English either from the word formation or the semantic are far away from the logicality. Since we use these meanings in many years, it will not change. Such as ‘face the music’ means accept the criticism or blame, not escape the obligation. Weather the word formation or the meaning of the word are different from its logically meaning. We have more examples like this; get out of bed on the wrong side, start a hare, see red, on the nail. Another one is un- analogy. The meaning of an idiom usually formed after a long time of the history and social but did not form from the logical. So the meaning of these idiom will stable, we can not change it. We can not get the meaning of downside up from the meaning of up and down. Also take in hands and take into hand. We can’t use analogy to guess the meaning of a new idiom and also we can't make a new idiom from this.
D. Semantic change caused by structural change
The language also developed. In the communication or the need of the sentence, we always add some additions or change some words of the idioms, to help make the main idea clearer. And also we can make more fresh thoughts and add the expressive force through extension, narrowing, omission of the meaning of the idiom.
Addition
We can add some modifier to the original idiom to change meaning of the idioms. Example 1:
Her husband often dined out and kept rather disreputable c
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