An Empirical Study Of The Verb-noun Heterosemy Representation In Chinese-english Dictionaries

The issue of word classes is time-honored,and linguistic categories like word classes are hailed as “God Particles” of language.Due to the lack of strict morphological changes in Modern Chinese,a typical analytic language,the study of Chinese word classes has always been a thorny problem,especially the treatment of heterosemous lexemes.Verbs and nouns are considered as the most common word classes in languages,and the study of verb-noun heterosemy is one of the most critical and difficult issues in word class categorization.However,most studies of verb-noun heterosemy based on dictionaries are limited to theoretical speculation,empirical studies in Chinese-foreign dictionaries are rare.Thus,comparative analysis of large and medium-sized Chinese-foreign dictionaries in verb-noun heterosemy are lacking and badly needed.In view of this,under the guidance of the Two-level Word Class Categorization Theory,this thesis is intended to conduct a synchronic and diachronic comparative study on the verb-noun heterosemy representation in five Chinese-English dictionaries based on Chinese-English Dictionary(1st / 2nd / 3rd editions),New Century ChineseEnglish Dictionary(2nd ed.)and New Age Chinese-English Dictionary(2nd ed.).Accordingly,it is found that both achievements and problems exist in this study: Generally speaking,the number of verb-noun heterosemous lexemes in three editions of CED has significantly increased diachronically;synchronically the number of verbnoun heterosemous lexemes in CED3,NCCED2 and NACED2 is apparently higher than that in Modern Chinese dictionaries,together with some improvements in the microstructure.Yet it still fails to fully reflect the status quo of verb-noun heterosemous lexemes in Modern Chinese.Meanwhile,numerous inconsistencies in shared verb-noun heterosemous lexemes can still be seen in word class labeling.Besides,based on the survey of corpus-based usage patterns,word class labeling of verb-noun heterosemous lexemes in Chinese-English dictionaries is influenced by word class labeling of Modern Chinese dictionaries,and artificially minimizing the number of heterosemous lexemes leads to the omission of nouns or verbs.The reason is that the confusion in word class labeling of heterosemous lexemes is limited by the “Principle of Parsimony” of “minimizing the number of heterosemous lexemes”.It is not realized that heterosemy belongs to the grammatical multifunctionality of highfrequency lexemes in communal lexicon,and is unsuitable to follow the “Principle of Parsimony” which is in line with the classical logic since heterosemy follows quantum logic or fuzzy logic.This study supposes that Chinese-English dictionaries are supposed to get rid of the restriction of “Principle of Parsimony” which is under the guidance of first-order logic on dealing word class labeling.The study of word classes distinguishes word class categorization at the levels of langue and parole and analyze the conventionalized propositional speech act function(s)as well as the conventionalized meaning making patterns and grammatical functions to identify class membership of lexemes based on investigation of corpus-based usage patterns.Hence,this study not only is helpful to optimize word class labeling of verb-noun heterosemous lexemes in Chinese-English dictionaries,improve the quality of Chinese-English dictionaries,but also can further deepen the research of Modern Chinese word classes.