Words Polyphony "Xinhua Dictionary.

The Xinhua Dictionary is the first Chinese characters’ dictionary after the founding of P. R.China, which uses modern Chinese for definitions and giving examples. Since there was nodictionary for standard modern Chinese language at that time, The Xinhua Dictionary served as adictionary for not only the Chinese characters but also the modern Chinese language, and playedan important role in nationwide education. As Mr. Wei Jiangong put it in the general compilingguideline,“the characters go with sound, the meaning goes with characters, and the words go withthe meaning” The Xinhua Dictionary made a unique success by the processing of multisyllabicwords.This study is a comprehensive survey on multisyllabic words in the13versions of TheXinhua dictionary from the first edition in1953to the latest edition in2011. Both explicit andimplicit multisyllabic words in The Xinhua Dictionary were examined synchronically anddiachronically under the framework of lexicography, lexicology, and cognitive science. Athorough study on the multisyllabic words in The Xinhua Dictionary sheds lights on compilingguidelines and principles for Chinese characters’ dictionaries in particular and is thus a promotionof the study for modern Chinese characters’ dictionaries in general.This study analyzed the aspects of the compilation for the explicit multisyllabic words in TheXinhua Dictionary, namely the selection of entries, the formation of entries (morphology),definition, giving examples, pronunciation, and cross-reference. Also, this study investigated thecompilation for the implicit multisyllabic words, including the reduplicated words marked by themarker “(叠)”, compound words with suffix markers “(-子)(-儿)(-头)”, the serial compoundwords labeled by "○连", the exemplar multisyllabic words with the notation of parenthesisinterpretation, the multisyllabic words composed by the entry character(s) in the interpretation,and the special synonyms. In addition, this study made a comparison between the compilation forthe multisyllabic words in the dictionaries for Chinese characters such as The Xinhua Dictionaryand in the dictionaries for the Chinese language such as the prestigious The Modern ChineseDictionary. Results show that the compilation of the multisyllabic words in The XinhuaDictionary differs from in The Modern Chinese Dictionary, namely the ways of entire compilingstructure are different. In The Xinhua Dictionary, a more flexible and thus diversified way wasadopted for the labeling and annotation of (especially) the implicit multisyllabic words.This study concluded with a number of new ideas and new perspectives on the basis of acomprehensive corpus on the13versions of The Xinhua Dictionary, which are both of theoreticalinterest for dictionary studies and of practical interest for dictionary compilations, especially thecompilation of compact dictionaries for Chinese characters.