Idiom is a part of stereotyped phrases or short sentences in China's Chinese vocabulary. Idiom is a major feature of China culture. It has a fixed structure and a fixed sentence, which expresses a certain meaning and is used as a whole in the sentence.
A large part of idioms are passed down from ancient times, and the words used are often different from those used in modern Chinese. They represent a story or an allusion. Idiom is a ready-made word, similar to idioms and proverbs, but slightly different.
Idioms have the following basic characteristics:
1, structural fixity
The components and structural forms of idioms are fixed, and it is generally impossible to change or increase or decrease morphemes at will. For example, "cold lips and cold teeth" cannot be changed to "cold lips and cold teeth", "cold lips and cold teeth" or "cold lips and cold teeth".
"No ink in the chest" cannot be added as "No ink in the chest". In addition, the word order in idioms is fixed and cannot be changed at will. For example, "context" cannot be changed to "context"; "Great achievements" cannot be changed to "great achievements".
2. Integrity of meaning
Idioms are holistic in meaning. Its meaning is often not the simple addition of its constituent meanings, but the overall meaning further summarized on the basis of its constituent meanings, such as "the fox is fake and tiger is powerful" on the surface, but actually "bullying people by the strength of others";
"Cooking with a dead rabbit and a dead dog" refers to "cooking with a dead rabbit and a dead dog" on the surface, but actually refers to "people who serve the rulers are abandoned or killed after success"; On the surface, "forgetting to eat and sleep" means "forgetting to eat and sleep", but in practice it means "extremely concentrating" and so on.
3. Diversity of grammatical functions
From the perspective of Chinese grammar, Chinese idioms are equivalent to a phrase in a sentence. Because phrases can act as different components in sentences, the grammatical functions of idioms are also varied.
There are various forms of Chinese idioms, including four-character idioms, five-character idioms, six-character idioms, seven-character idioms and eight-character idioms, among which four-character idioms are the main form of Chinese idioms. Therefore, the analysis of the grammatical function of idioms here mainly focuses on the analysis of four-character idioms as syntactic components.