英语习语非稳定性结构特征研究Study on Instability Structure of English Idioms [6]
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:13989
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
ompany.
In the above example,keep rather disreputable company come from English idiom keep company.
Example 2:
Not satisfied with routine inspection and discovery of cracks on the rails’ surface, he set out to spot hidden trouble.In that way danger could be kept at two arms’ length.
In the sentence ‘keep at two arms’ length’ come from ‘keep at arm's length’. By doing this we can enhance the meaning.
Sometimes we can break the normal rules to add some elements to make the meaning change. Example 3:
One woman shopper said to another, “Mary, 1et’sspend money likes water — drip…drip…drip…”
“Spend money like water” means “spend money very casually” however when we add this drip here, this idiom we not refer to the money spending. It is a wonderful example.
Shortening
The meaning of the idioms can also change if we shorten the elements of the idioms. For example:
He is always telling the director how to run the business;that’s like teaching his grandmother.
“Teach his grandmother” is come from teach one’s grand mother to suck eggs
Replacement
The meaning of the idioms will change if we replace the elements with other words, and these elements are usually noun, verb and other content word. For example:
Where there is smoke,there is a meeting.
This sentence come from the English proverb:Where there is a will,there is a way.
Position-shifting
Some idioms have two parts,we can split it in the specific condition. Example 1:
The superior story is, simply, one which is worth re-reading.Time, fortunately
tends to separate the silk purses from the sow’s ears.
“ the silk purses” and “the sow’s ears” come from “One can’t make a silk purse out of a sow's ear”.Here silk purse means good thing, and sow’s ears means bad story.
Example 2:
“Bennie’s their son,” said Henry. “Like son, like father, I imagine,” said Bonnefois. “Like son,like father ”comes form “Like father,like son”. It means the son is so great, the father will be more great, usually it used in the irony.
Conclusion
Traditionally, Structural stability and semantic unity are considered as the two characters of English idioms. And the elements of English idioms can not change a little even an article. That is to say we can’t change the elements and the word order of English idioms, and can’t delete any component of it and cannot add any words to an English idiom. According to Saussure’s syntagmatic and paradigmatic theory and Chomsky’s famous Move α rule, the author of this article analyzes the idiom from the inflectional change and the change of the word and grammar, and finds that the structure of English idioms is not always stable. In some specific conditions, we can do some change to the structure if it will not change the basic structure and affect the primary meaning of English idioms. In this paper the author thinks that there still exists some grammatical change such as plural form of the nouns; past participle and present participle forms of the verbs; the third person form of the verbs; genitive form of the nouns; comparative and superlative forms of the adjectives and adverbs. As to lexical change, we can add some elements to some idioms, delete some elements of the idioms, and we can change the order of the elements of the idiom and we can dismember the elements of the idioms. Meanwhile, the meaning of idioms can also change because the grammatical and lexical change. This research can help the learners’ cognize, master and employ the idioms pro
本论文由英语论文网提供整理,提供论文代写,英语论文代写,代写论文,代写英语论文,代写留学生论文,代写英文论文,留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。