On The Identification And Arrangement Of Senses In Chinese-English Learner’s Dictionaries

A Chinese-English learner’s dictionary is specially designed for English learners of Chinese. Its identification and arrangement of senses directly affect the learners’ understanding and mastery of the lexicon. For lack of a theoretical foundation, sense identification in traditional dictionaries has to depend on the lexicographer’s subjective judgment. This has resulted in different senses of a lexeme distinguished by different people even though the same criterion is applied. In terms of sense arrangement, traditional dictionaries have mainly adopted historical and logical principles while learner’s dictionaries have adopted frequency principle. Historical principle arranges senses in chronological order, but the earliest sense may not be the one a learner needs to find out; logical principle is rather subjective; frequency principle is relatively objective but the most frequent sense is often known to the learner.This study assumes that a lexeme is initially monosemous:it becomes polysemous mainly through its metaphorical use. From the perspective of Lakoff and Johnson’s theories of metaphor and embodiment hypothesis, this study reanalysizes the43Chinese characters for human body parts in The General Service List of Standardized Chinese Characters (2013), with the number of senses a Chinese character has being determined by the number of freely interchangeable English counterparts. The senses of a lexeme are arranged by first establishing its basic sense in accordance with Hanyu Da Zi Dian and the OED and then in accordance with the metaphoric pathways of derived senses, with synecdoche considered being closer to its basis sense than its metonomy.The new sense identification and arrangement methods have not only made the senses of a lexeme better organized, but also have reduced their number. For instance, whereas Xiandai Hanyu Zi Dian (6th edition) distinguishes16senses of tou and13senses of kou, only10and7remain following the reanalysis of this study. The root meaning of almost all words for body parts refers to the relevant body parts. According to the nature of target domains, metonomy is categorized into four types: physical, social, mental and verbal. Besides, through gramaticalization,7of the43words have developed into numeric suffixes in addition to their other uses. The new identification method and arrangement can facilitate foreign learners’comprehension of different senses of a Chinese lexeme acquire them in a more efficient way.