A Study On Word Class Labeling Of "X 动" Disyllabic Lexemes In A Chinese-english Dictionary(3^rd Edition)from The Perspective Of The Two-level Word Class Categorization Theory

Word class categorization is considered as the study of “God particles” of languages.Analytic languages like Modern Chinese lack clear morphological changes,which makes studies on word classes in Modern Chinese a knotty and tricky problem especially the treatment of heterosemy/multifunctionality of lexemes.All of these problems make the word class labeling a conundrum in Chinese-foreign language dictionaries,especially Chinese-English dictionaries.Besides,the word class labeling has great impats on the macro-structure and micro-structure in lexicography especially word classes of lexemes,definitions and examples in the micro-structure.Great achievements have been made by many scholars on studies of Chinese-English dictionaries,yet word class labeling is still a tough issue.Since Modern Chinese and English belong to typical analytic languages,this study takes “X 动” disyllabic lexemes in A Chinese-English Dictionary(3rdedition)as the research object from the perspective of two-level word class categorization theory to analyze their word class labeling on the basis of large-scale balanced corpora.Meanwhile,this thesis made a comparison with A Chinese-English Dictionary(1stedition),A Chinese-English Dictionary(2ndedition)and Contemporary Chinese Dictionary(6thedition)diachronically and synchronically to find out the potential problems in word class labeling of “X 动” disyllabic lexemes.Besides,usage-pattern investigations of “X 动 ” disyllabic lexemes based on the Modern Chinese Corpus developed by the China National Language and Character Working Committee and the Modern Chinese Corpus of the Center for Chinese Linguistics in Peking University were made to analyze the conventionalized propositional speech act function(s)to decide the word classes of “X 动” disyllabic lexemes.It is found that some problems exist in word class labeling of “X 动 ”disyllabic lexemes: most “X 动” disyllabic lexemes are labeled as verbs(accounting for 73.50%)and the treatment of multifunctionality of “X 动” disyllabic lexemes istoo conservative(multi-category lexemes account for 9.41%).After the usage-pattern investigation is made based on corpora,verbs among “X 动” disyllabic lexemes account for 56.73% and multi-category lexemes account for 33.65%.The study shows that word class labeling of “X 动 ” disyllabic lexemes in A Chinese-English Dictionary(3rdedition)deviates from the nature of language as a complex system,observes the “principle of parsimony” and ignores the levels of word class categorization.Moreover,the corpus-based method is not applied adequately in practice.It is proved in this thesis that word class labeling of “X 动” disyllabic lexemes in A Chinese-English Dictionary(3rdedition)should be based on large-scale balanced corpora for the analysis of the conventionalized propositional speech act function(s)to define their word classes.This thesis adopts a new theoretical perspective and makes an empirical study on the word class labeling of “X 动 ” disyllabic lexemes in A Chinese-English Dictionary(3rdedition).Thus this study not only sheds light on Chinese-English dictionary compilation but also deepens the ontological studies on Modern Chinese grammar.