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Presenter
Saule Abdramanova
Middle  East Technical University
Turkey

Title
Acquisition of English Idioms by Turkish Learners

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of an acquisition of English idioms with color component by Turkish learners. The present research is based on the assumption that colors denote specific connotative meanings, peculiar to a certain language, and that these connotations contribute to the positive or negative perception of the whole meaning of the idiom. The comparative analysis of English and Turkish idioms revealed similarities and differences in connotative meaning of their color components. The object of the present research is English idioms with “red”, ”green”, ”blue”, ”black” and ”white” components.  The hypothesis of the study is that Turkish learners can easily comprehend the meaning of English idioms with color component if in the Turkish language there are equivalent and analogous idioms, and vice versa, they cannot guess their meaning if there are no such idioms in both languages. To check the hypothesis, the experiment was conducted in a group of twenty respondents who were asked to guess the meaning of the English idioms.

The questionnaire they filled in contains five English idioms with the color component in their structure: an idiom with ‘green’ component has a Turkish equivalent, an idiom with ‘black’ has got an analogous Turkish idiom.  The experiment confirmed that the meaning of the analogous idiom is easily guessed’; the experiment refuted the hypothesis regarding the equivalent English idiom: only half of respondents could guess its meaning. The data gathered from three idioms with “blue, red and white” components conform to the hypothesis: they obtained no correct answer.