A Study Of Representation Strategies Of Noun-adjective Heterosemy In The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language (5^th Ed.)

For typical analytical languages like Modern Chinese,Modern English and Modern Vietnamese,the grammatical multi-functionality of word types is a longstanding and complicated problem,which is mainly reflected in the representation strategy of heterosemy in dictionaries.The question of how to treat heterosemy,especially noun-verb heterosemy and noun-adjective heterosemy remains to be a conundrum perplexing Chinese grammarians and the compilers of Chinese dictionaries and Chinese-English dictionaries.Most of the existing studies on heterosemy are confined to theoretical speculation,with a lack of relevant empirical studies based on large databases.Therefore,the study intends to explore the representation strategy of noun-adjective heterosemy in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language(5^th ed.)on the basis of the Two-level Word Class Categorization Theory,aiming to provide Modern Chinese with some enlightenment for the treatment of noun-adjective heterosemy.It is found that there exists considerable heterosemy in Modern English,accounting of 9.24%of the whole dictionary,among which there are 4084noun-adjective lexemes（reaching up to 42.63%of the total number of heterosemy）,only second to noun-verb heterosemy（accounting for 47.32%of the total number of heterosemy）.With an overall investigation of the microstructure,it is also found that the noun-adjective lexemes are treated scientifically and systematically in the dictionary,because its treatments are consistent with language facts,demonstrating a close relationship with frequency no matter in terms of sense order,definition or exemplification.Our research indicates that the heterosemy in Modern Chinese should not be minimized deliberately in line with the“principle of parsimony”,by which the burden on dictionary users won’t be lightened.Instead,the systematic representation of senses,definitions and exemplification will be negatively impacted because of the ignorance of language facts.The study is not only conducive to deepening the study of the word classes in analytical languages,but also to improving the word class labeling both in Modern Chinese dictionaries and Modern Chinese Corpora.