汉语四字格成语语义结构的对称性与认知

The present paper is an attempt to study the semantic symmetrical features of four character idioms in Chinese and their effects on cognition. On the basis of linguistic research and with A Dictionary of Chinese Idioms as sample, the authors first made a static statistical analysis of all the entries in the Dictionary and then conducted two experiments to test their hypothesis. The following conclusions have been arrived at: 1) of all the four character idioms, 39.29% are semantically symmetrical with the first two characters having the same, similar or opposite meaning as the latter part; and 2) experimental findings indicate that idioms with symmetrical semantic structures are easier to memorize than those without such features.