On The Defining Metalanguage Of Nouns In Modern Chinese Dictionary (the6^thEdition): From User Perspective

Definition is the core of lexicographic compilation of the dictionary, theaccuracy and sufficiency of definition are the main criteria to judge a dictionary.Defining metalanguage is the tool for the implementation of definition, therefore, itis of great theoretical and practical significance to study defining metalanguage ofthe dictionary.Modern Chinese Dictionary (the6thedition) has been considered as the mostreliable reference book and the most authoritative medium-sized dictionary in China.It enjoys a high reputation since the advent of MCD, however, this does not make itperfect, because there are still some deficiencies. There are a great number ofresearches on this dictionary, such as the character pattern, choice of words, phoneticnotation, part of speech labeling, definition and so on. However, there are fewspecialized researches on the nouns’ defining metalanguage from user perspective.Thus, this study will integrate function theory of lexicography and communicativetheory of lexicography, with user research as the breakthrough point, with the nounsin MCD (the6thedition) as the research object, and give a closed and exhaustiveexamination on its definition patterns, so as to find out the grammatical relationsbetween the defining metalanguage of nouns and the defined words, and thusdisclosing the syntactic and semantic rules of nouns’ defining metalanguage.Through theoretical analysis and empirical investigation, we conclude asfollows:Firstly, syntactic and semantic rules of defining metalanguage of disyllabiccompound nous are the following:1. Word definition.This kind of definition model is the most convenient and economical. Accordingto the structure type of defining words, it can fall into three types:(1) one-worddefinition;(2) two-word definition;(3) additional definition. There are243words using word definition in1417disyllabic compound nouns from letter A to letter B,which is about17.1%. Among them, one-word definition accounts for the most,which is about70%.2. Phrase definition.This pattern mainly fall into two aspects:(1) partial structure;(2) joint structure.In this model, partial structure is mainly used.3. Sentence definition.According to the internal form and syntactic and semantic characteristics of thedefining metalanguage, this pattern can fall into two logical definition, explanationand description.Secondly, this study points out the existing problems of nouns’ definingmetalanguage, and gives some advice from the user perspective to improve thedefinition.Thirdly, this study gives a summary of the principles that followed in theconstruction of the syntactic and semantic rules of nouns’ defining metalanguage inMCD.This study has theoretical and practical significance. In theory, based on thefunction theory and communicative theory of lexicography, this study systematicallyconstructs a new research paradigm of defining metalanguage based on the userperspective, which not only expands the structure model of user research, but alsoimprove the research content and knowledge system of theoretical lexicography. Inpractice, this study through detailed examples comprehensively describes how toimprove the structure and words of defining metalanguage from the user perspective,which will provide guidance and help for the compilation and revision of the lateChinese dictionary.