Characteristics of the numeral “一” in Chinese idioms and its equivalent expression in Vietnamese

Abstract

Idioms containing numerals have long attracted scholarly attention. Previous studies have approached this topic from various perspectives, including the distribution patterns of numerals in idioms, their syntactic structures, semantic features, and the cultural connotations they convey.
This paper primarily examines the grammatical characteristics and both arithmetic and non-arithmetic meanings of the numeral “一” (yī – one) in Chinese idioms. A distinctive contribution of the study lies in its discussion of an aspect that has received limited attention in prior research which is the equivalent expressions of the Chinese numeral “一” in Vietnamese idioms, represented by the words một and nhất. The findings of this study not only provide reference material for learners and users of Chinese, but also offer implications and directions for future comparative linguistic research.