Dr Fan Jing Hua

Request Full Paper

Abstract

The significance of vocabulary codification into word classes in foreign language learner's dictionary has been explored and expanded by such lexicographers and scholars as Zgusta, Al-Kasimi, Hui Yu, Yong Heming, and Wang Renqiang in particular has done a very detailed comparative study in his book on the codification in Chinese-English dictionaries. This paper starts with an analysis of a few entries from several popular Chinese-English dictionaries, and discusses with special reference to the examples how to construct the activeness of learner\'s dictionary from the perspective of codification of words. Most C-E dictionary compilers rely on Chinese dictionary as the basis for both e. Headwords are provided with translations of semantic equivalents, sometimes with pragmatic notes to explain the usage, but in terms of vocabulary codification the translated words are not always of the same word classes as the headwords, more often not in the example sentences. This practice of compilation has resulted in four fissures in bilingual lexicography: a) fissure between core grammar and peripheral grammar, b) fissure between the ontological and the referential in two peripheral grammar systems, c) fissure between grammatical attributes and pragmatic usage, and d) fissure between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. These four fissures boil down to four gaps in terms of vocabulary codification: a) the gap in word classification between Chinese language and universality of language, b) the gap between two languages on the ontological level, c) gap between equivalents of English and Chinese in meaning and word classification, and d) gap between the uneven dynamic development between two languages. For Chinese-English dictionaries, even though the definitions of headwords may be corpus-based, the example sentences are often translations of non-natural sentences from Chinese. This further increases the above mentioned gaps, and causes the users, foreign users in particular, to find it even more difficult to learn the functions of Chinese from the dictionary. In the light of comparison between some entries from several Chinese-English dictionaries, the paper puts forward some tentative suggestions on the compilation of bilingual learner's dictionaries on the basis of parallel corpus based and further elaborates on the implications of learner's dictionary for second language teaching.

Keyword(s) : Learner's dictionary; vocabulary codification; natural sentence; equivalent in value