A Study Of The Representation Strategies Of Heterosemy In The Chinese-English Translation Dictionary(2015)

The issue of word classes is time-honored.Linguistic categories like word classes have been considered as the study of “god particles” in language.Owing to lacking strict and adequate morphological marking and changes,the word class problem in over one thousand analytic languages like Modern Chinese has even been compared to the Goldbach Conjecture in linguistics,of which the multifunctionality or heterosemy of word types resulting from conversion has long been the most controversial issue.The immaturity in the theoretical studies of Modern Chinese word classes can directly cause various contradictions and confusions of word class labeling in Chinese or Chinese-English dictionaries,strongly affecting the quality of Chinese or Chinese-English dictionaries and the efficiency of second language learning.Despite the fact that word class labeling in Chinese-English dictionaries has reached numerous achievements for the past few years,word class problem,particularly heterosemy of word types,remains a major concern.The Chinese-English Translation Dictionary(2015)(CETD-2015 for short)is a bilingual dictionary included in the 12 th Five-year Plan for the Publication Project of National Key Book.Its former edition,A Practical Chinese-English Dictionary for Translation(2001),was honored the 5th National Dictionary Award in 2003.However,only one survey has been made on CETD-2015 without systematic in-depth research on its word class labeling.Based on the DIY Word Class Labeling Database of the Chinese-English Translation Dictionary(2015)and the Modern Chinese Corpus of the Center for Chinese Linguistics in Peking University(the CCL corpus for short),this thesis is intended to conduct a systematic in-depth research on the representation strategies of heterosemy in CETD-2015 under the guidance of the Two-level Word Class Categorization Theory.In this thesis,the representation strategies of heterosemy mainly refer to the number,the percentage and the internal structure of heterosemy in its macrostructure,and the adequacy of word class labeling,the consistency of translation equivalents at the level of langue and parole with the meaning and the word classes of their source entries,and the symmetry of symmetrical lexemes in their word class labeling and sense arrangement in its microstructure.It is found that both achievements and weaknesses exist in the representation strategies of heterosemy in CETD-2015.At the macro level,the number of heterosemy of entries with complete word class labeling information in CETD-2015 is 3770 with a percentage of 6.01%,which slightly increases compared with that in The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary(6th ed.)(CCD6 for short)but is obviously fewer than that in A New Century Chinese-English Dictionary(2nd ed.)(NCCED2 for short).The internal structure of heterosemy in CETD-2015 is more scientific than that in CCD6,yet it is inferior to that in NCCED2.Besides,there is a striking difference between the percentages of heterosemy in CETD-2015(6.01%)and OALD-7(10.48%).The findings show that CETD-2015 has expanded the scope of word class labeling of heterosemy by comparison with that in CCD6,yet the heterosemy presented in it is partially consistent with the language reality of Modern Chinese,which reveals the invalid theoretical basis and conflicting practice in the studies of heterosemy in Modern Chinese.At the micro level,the treatment of heterosemous lexemes in CETD-2015 has basically followed the principle of symmetry and the principle of “Translating by Word Classes”,yet contradiction still exists,and there are some entries whose word classes have been omitted artificially.Based on discussion,four principal causes for the existing problems have been discovered: these are the deliberate minimization of the number of heterosemy in Modern Chinese by following the Principle of Parsimony,the inadequate recognition of the true essence of word classes and of the word class categorization at the two levels of parole and langue,the wrong criterion and procedure for word class classification and the deficient utilization of corpora,and the misuse of first order predicate logic,of which the last one is the most fundamental.From a brand-new theoretical perspective,this thesis makes a systematic in-depth study of the representation strategies of heterosemy in CETD-2015,which can not only improve the quality of Chinese or Chinese-English lexicography,but deepen the studies of word class categorization of analytic languages like Modern Chinese.