The Complementarities Of "the Chinese Dictionary"(2nd Edition)

After ten years of revision, the second edition of "the Chinese Dictionary" was publishedin2010April. Compared with the first edition, the second one has been improved andenhanced in most aspects significantly. However, as a large Chinese dictionary, its revisionwork can’t be done once and for all. The second edition of "the Chinese Dictionary" still hasmany shortcomings and mistakes. On the basis of fully affirming the achievements of thenew edition, this paper makes it discussion and supplement to provide reference to thefurther revision for it.The introduction part of the paper introduces the published background of the newedition of "the Chinese Dictionary", the situation of academic circles researching on"the Chinese Dictionary" and the main achievements of the new edition of "theChinese Dictionary" briefly. On the main achievements, this part illustrates from explainingthe rare words, correcting errors in interpretation, making the interpretation more perfect,adjusting the items, modifying the phonetic, adding and deleting examples.The second part is the main body of this paper, which discusses on the new edition of"the Chinese Dictionary" from six aspects: the character collection, the meaning items, theexplanation, the examples, the style and the collating. The discussion on the meaning itemsis from three aspects: the leakage of the meaning items, the meaning items which didn’tmatch the examples, the meaning items which should be merged. The discussion on theexamples is from two aspects: the leakage of the examples and the examples which are notthe earliest. On the basis of studying the text of the new edition of"the Chinese Dictionary",this section aims to propose the author’s own opinions by giving logical discussion andinformative materials on the issues.In view of the lack of the second edition of "the Chinese Dictionary", the conclusion partput forward the improvement methods: first, should pay attention to information work,continue to collect and accumulate information; second, should gradually establish a Chinesediachronic corpus which services for the revision of "the Chinese Dictionary"; third, shouldstrengthen the studying and explaining work on the new meaning of words which newlygenerated in recent decades especially since the reform and opening up; fourth, In need ofthe government’s attention and investment as always, and government should establish aworking mechanism which to ensure continuous improvement of the quality of the work.