Chapter One Introduction
1.1The Purpose of the Paper
The present paper discusses English and Chinese three-word idioms with the assistanceof construction grammar. The main purpose of this research is to classify English and Chinesethree-word idioms and in particular to conduct a contrastive study on the syntactic functionsof those idioms with the assistance of A/DA (Autonomy/Dependence Alignment).There have been abundant researches on idioms，but few have discussed about thecategorization of idioms except for Fillmore，Kay and O'Connor ⑴.To enrich this study, thepresent paper makes an attempt to classify the three word idioms. The categorization pavesthe way for the analysis of the syntactic functions of those idioms, upon which a contrastivestudy of Chinese and English three-word idioms will be conducted. In this research,constructional approaches are applied in the classification of the three-word idioms. Moreover,the present study will provide a new way of using the model of construction grammar andsubstantiate the feasibility of this new method by the application of data processing program.To fulfill the tasks, the present paper will endeavor to answer the following threequestions:
1)How can the Chinese and English three-word idioms be classified?
2)How does the categorization relate with the syntactic functions of those idioms?
3)What are the differences and similarities of the syntactic functions between Chineseand English three-word idioms?
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1.2Why Three-Word Idioms?
Researchers who have studied Chinese idioms tend to engage themselves in proverbs andfour-character idioms(成语).Three-character idioms have hardly drawn the attention ofscholars, resulting in the lack of study on Chinese three-character idioms，let alone theconstructional research in this direction. In English, there are many idioms consisting of threewords，which are the natural counterpart of Chinese three-character idioms，but their researched can be hardly found. The present paper, focusing on the study of three-wordidioms，is committed to fulfilling the blank. In the early stages of transformational grammar，constructions retained their centralrole, construction-specific rules and constraints being the norm.In the past two decades，Fillmore et al.⑴ defines construction as any syntactic patternwhich is assigned one or more conventional functions in a language, together with whatever islinguistically conventionalized about its contribution to the meaning or the use of structurescontaining it And Lakoff [6] proposes that construction is a form-meaning pair.Goldberg puts forward the definition of construction as follows [3]: C is aCONSTRUCTION if C is a form-meaning pair < Fi, Si> such that some aspect of Fi or someaspect of Si is not strictly predictable from C，s component parts or from other previouslyestablished constructions. Namely, a construction is a pair of its form and meaning and themeaning of the whole construction can not be inferred from its components.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Previous Studies on Construction Grammar and Idioms
As a branch of cognitive linguistics, construction grammar has become increasinglyprevailing in language study. Construction grammar has much to do with descriptivelinguistics, Chomsky's generative grammar componential model theory, unificationgrammar, word grammar, and frame semantics.It composes of construction grammartheory of Fillmore, Kay and O'Connor，Lakoff[6]，Goldberg Langacker and Croft In China, scholars also become inclined more and more to cognitive linguistics,especially construction grammar, such as Niu Baoyi， Jianming，Shen Jiaxuan，Wang Li Chen Manhua [21] and Xiong Xueliang [22] and so on. Time has witnessed thedevelopment of construction grammar and ample articles have been written on constructiongrammar. From those papers it is not difficult to infer that scholars prefer to do research inpure theory of construction grammar or put construction grammar in syntactic and semanticanalysis.Scholars have also done sufficient researches on the definition of "idiom". A majority ofthe scholars prefers to translate “idiom，，into “成语”，but they are not equivalent [23].
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2.2 Qualitative Study on Idioms
Qualitative studies on idioms include translating studies, rhetoric studies and so on.Scholars prefer to analyze idioms on basis of theories and the cognition of scholarsthemselves to criticize the translation of idioms in literature.In the study Seeking the Nature of Idioms: A Study in Idiomatic Structure, the authortalks about the structure of idioms. According to the author，there is a relationship between thesyntax of the idiomatic phrase and the idiom's literal meaning 网.However, the research is aqualitative one, lacking reliable statistics.Among the study of idiom translating, A Dream of the Red Chamber [28] has always beenthe favorite work for scholars. Zhao Dongmei [29] writes in the paper that the idioms accountsfor 5% in the narrative part of A Dream of the Red Chamber and 95% in the dialogue.However, except for the data of the proportion of idioms, there is no other data in the paper tosupport the idea of the author，which makes the whole study less quantitative. Xin Hongjuanand Song Ziyan also writes about idioms in A Dream of the Red Chamber，but what theyfocus on is translation from Chinese to English. The authors base their study on SkoposTheory to analyze the cultural images in David Hawkes's translating and conclude thetranslating skills of Hawkes [32] to shed light on Chinese idiomatic expression translationThe authors don't put forward the proportion of what translating skills Hawkes uses most ormention the flaws of the translating methods.
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Chapter Three Research Methodology.........13
3.1The Introduction to Chemical Bond.........13
3.2Autonomous Part/Dependent Part-Alignment.........16
3.3A/DA Applied in the Categorization of the Three-Word Idioms.........18
3.4The Methodology of the Contrastive Study of Syntactic Functions.........20
3.4.1The Tertium Comparationis (TC) of the Contrastive Study.........20
3.4.2The Introduction of Corpus and SPSS in the Following Research......... 20
3.5Conclusion.........21
Chapter Four Constructional Approach to Idioms-The Case of Three-Word Idioms.........22
4.1The Study of Three-Word Idioms in Terms of Construction Grammar.........22
4.2An Overview of the Classification of Three-Word Idioms.........23
4.3The Classification of Chinese Three-Character Idioms via A/DA.........23
4.4The Classification of English Three-Word Idioms via A/DA.........30
4.5Conclusion.........35
Chapter Five Contrastive Study on the Syntactic Functions of Chinese.........36
5.1The Contrastive Study on the Categorization between Chinese.........36
5.2The Contrastive Study of the Syntactic Functions.........38
5.3SPSS Applied in the Study on Syntactic Functions.........47
5.4Conclusion.........57
Chapter Five Contrastive Study on the Syntactic Functions of Chinese and English Three-Word Idioms
5.1 The Contrastive Study on the Categorization between Chinese Three-Character Idioms and English Three-Word Idioms
Based on the categorization in Chapter Four, the contrastive study of the English andChinese three-word idioms will be pided into two parts: the ionic-bond type and thecovalent-bond type. Before that, we first analyze and compare the subtypes of Chinese andEnglish three-word idioms.In the first step of the categorization of the two types of idioms, it seems that bothChinese and English three-word idioms are the same. However, among the ionic-bond idiomsthere is one exception; the AICI3 type. As is put in Chapter Four，the AICI3 type in Chineseionic-bond idioms，whose inner structure differs from ionic-bond ones, is finally classified ascovalent-bond idioms. In Chinese, those AICI3 idioms are “敲门砖”，“紧箍咒” and so on. Theverbs within the idioms fimction distinctively from those in “拍马屈” and “撂下脸”，asanalyzed in Chapter Four. However, in English, there is no such AICI3 idiom. The differencelies in grammar. English is grammatical, while Chinese is rather agrammatical. Thus, in theclassification of Chinese idioms the presence of verbs cannot be seen as an absolute standard.That is why in the first step of categorization, there is an AICI3 type (belonging tocovalent-bond idiom), in which the idioms contain verbs. However, the grammatical Englishthree-word idioms can be classified fully dependent on the prersence of verbs. That is whyChinese three-character idioms are pided into ionic-bond idioms and covalent-bond idioms(AICI3 idioms included), while English three-word idioms are categorized into ionic-bond idioms and covalent-bond idioms (without AICI3 type).The key similarities and differences mainly lie in the subtypes of either ionic-bondidioms or covalent-bond idioms，which will be discussed in the following section.
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Conclusion
The present paper has explored the Chinese three-character idioms and the Englishthree-word idioms. As Fillmore et al ⑴ put it，idioms are typical constructions. Due to this, inthe present study construction grammar is applied in the analysis of those idioms. The basicconcept of construction proposed by Goldberg ⑶ is the main basis of the whole study and theclassification of the English idioms of Fillmore et al ⑴ paves way for the categorization inthis thesis. Moreover, A/DA of Langacker [13] and Niu Baoyi is taken as the basic frame inthe further classification of the idioms. And the constructionalization proposed by Traugott[80]is also referred to in the contrastive study between Chinese and English idioms.According to the statistics, we conclude that Chinese and Englishshare the similar syntactic functions in covalent-bond idioms (70% act as modifiers orcomplements and 30% act as objects or subjects). However, as to ionic-bond idioms, all theEnglish ionic-bond idioms act as predicates, while in Chinese, there is also a small portion ofionic-bond idioms only functioning as complements or modifiers.In the chi-square test of the SPSS in Chapter Five, all the values of significance shown inthe tables are lower than 0.05. This proves that the sample test of the present paper isrepresentative.
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References (omitted)