An Empirical Study Of Word Class Labeling Of Total Reduplication Lexemes In New Century Chinese-English Dictionary(2^nd Edition)

The widely discussed study of word class categorization,known as the study of the“God Particles”in language,has a long history of more than 2000 years.As a typical analytic language,Modern Chinese,due to its lack of morphological changes,is challenged by a thorny and tricky problem of word classes especially when it comes to the criteria for word class identification and the treatment of multiple class membership.As such,all the controversies eventually lead to some contradiction and confusion in word class labeling in Modern Chinese dictionaries and Chinese-English dictionaries.As an important grammatical means in Chinese and the focus of lexicology and rhetorics,total reduplication lexemes serve as an essential part of Chinese-English dictionaries with complex and diverse word classes.As a result,accuracy of their word class labeling will inevitably have a direct influence on the overall quality of Chinese-English dictionaries.Guided by the Two-level Word Class Categorization Theory,this thesis focuses on the word class labeling of total reduplication lexemes in New Century Chinese-English Dictionary(2^ndedition)backed by large-scale balanced Modern Chinese corpora.Meanwhile,the word class labeling of the shared total reduplication entries in The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary(7^thedition)is compared to examine the wordhood representation and to see if there exist any mislabeling problems.Besides,usage-pattern investigations via corpora are conducted with the aim of identifying the word class categorization of those total reduplication lexemes.It is found that the basic principle of distinction between words and non-words is followed by New Century Chinese-English Dictionary(2^ndedition)when labeling total reduplication lexemes,but the multi-category lexemes outnumber the single-category ones overwhelmingly because the word class labeling of some total reduplication lexemes does not match perfectly with actual usage patterns;the word class labeling of some shared total reduplication lexemes in New Century Chinese-English Dictionary(2^ndedition)and The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary(7^thedition)is inconsistent in some way,and both the two dictionaries regard onomatopoeia as an independent word class in Chinese,which is not well justified.Onomatopoeia is classified from the perspective of word formation instead of grammatical classification.Given that,New Century Chinese-English Dictionary(2^ndedition)has not distinguished clearly two levels of word class categorization in word class labeling under the influence of“Principle of Parsimony”,so word classes at the community language level cannot be truly reflected,which deviates far from the nature of language as a complex adaptive system.And it has some misunderstanding in criteria and procedure of word class identification without applying corpus-based approach in practice.With an innovative theoretical perspective,this thesis conducts an empirical study on word class labeling of total reduplication lexemes in New Century Chinese-English Dictionary(2^ndedition).Thus,this study not only contributes to the word class labeling of total reduplication lexemes and even sheds light on the compilation of Chinese-English dictionaries,but also drives the study of Modern Chinese word classes in the long term.