Multi-Dimensional Discrimination Of English Equivalents In Domestic-oriented Chinese-English Dictionaries

For Chinese EFL learners, domestic-oriented Chinese-English Dictionaries (CEDs for short) could be a very useful and convenient lexical information resource in that it is indexed by Chinese characters. Various English words and phrases in domestic-oriented CEDs are provided as English equivalents i.e., synonyms, near-synonyms, or synonymous expressions under one Chinese entry word. Domestic-oriented CEDs presently available, however, are mostly not qualified to meet the practical needs of the Chinese EFL learners, for they only aim to translate the Chinese headwords into one or more English equivalents without providing adequate discriminative information of the English equivalents. Therefore, to provide effective discriminative information for English equivalents in domestic-oriented CEDs should not be ignored. This thesis intends to provide a theoretical and multi-dimensional model for the discrimination of English equivalents in domestic-oriented CEDs.This study makes a critical review on the studies of near-synonyms discrimination from five aspects:evaluation of word cluster, evaluation of discrimination criteria, evaluation of relevant theories, evaluation of representations of discriminative information and near-synonyms discrimination in existing dictionaries (English-Chinese Learner's Dictionaries and domestic-oriented CEDs) for the benefit of further study. Though lexicographers have put much effort into near-synonyms discrimination, the insufficiencies are still rather evident. At the same time, a questionnaire and some contrastive analyses of dictionaries are carried out to find out the problems of near-synonyms discrimination of Chinese EFL learners and of English equivalents discrimination in current domestic-oriented CEDs. The results indicate that Chinese EFL learners often have difficulties in English equivalents discrimination and the current treatment of near-synonyms problems in domestic-oriented CEDs can not satisfy Chinese EFL learners.How to deal properly with the discrimination of English equivalents in the domestic-oriented CEDs and to meet Chinese EFL learners'specific needs for English equivalents discrimination? It is reasonable to come to applied linguistics for an answer. Second Language Acquisition theory is expectedly to give the present research an explanation for the necessity of providing effective discriminative information of English equivalents in domestic-oriented CEDs. At same time, some theories relevant to the treatment of near-synonyms are examined and they are to serve as the theoretical foundation for the present study. These theories include:User's Perspective, Three Meta-functions of Meaning, Seven Types of Meaning, Semantically Synonymous Field, and Prominence Principle.Based on the above theories, the present study finally proposes a lexicographic model. It is a model for multi-dimensional discrimination of English equivalents in domestic-oriented CEDs. This model, including sixteen discrimination criteria is oriented for the theoretical and systematical treatment of English equivalents problems encountered especially by Chinese EFL learners. And at the same time, some practical ways for representations of English equivalents discriminative information in domestic-oriented CEDs are proposed in this thesis, especially in the form of table.