On the Definition of Chinese Quadrasyllabic Idiomatic Expressions in Chinese-French Dictionaries: Problems and Corpus-Based Solution

摘要

To define Chinese quadrasyllabic idiomatic expressions in Chinese-French dictionaries is a demanding work for dictionary compilers. By comparing and analyzing the definition of quadrasyllabic idiomatic expressions in Chinese-French dictionaries, this study discussed 4 kinds of problems (wrong definition, inappropriate definition, omission of senses and absence of contextual information), and then gave some suggestions to improve the definition of these Chinese idioms by observing and analyzing their real use in large-scale corpus.