A Study Of Exemplification In Pedagogical Dictionaries For Foreign Learners

Exemplifying principles are policies and guidelines on the selection andpresentation of examples in dictionaries, which are lexicographers' knowledge ofintrinsic characteristics and inherent laws of the two lexicographical activities ofselecting and presenting examples. The compilation of pedagogical dictionaries forforeign learners (PDFL) and the theoretical development of pedagogical lexicographycall for researchers to formulate exemplifying principles for this kind of dictionaries.To formulate exemplifying principles is in nature a type of reseach which conductstheoretical generalizations, the basis of which is for researchers to have a thoroughgrasp of the developments of research on specific exemplifying problems. Thecurrent studies on exemplifying principles for PDFL, however, are characterized byan insufficient grasp of developments of research on specific exemplifying problems,insufficient attention to the exemplifying theories and practices adopted by Englishlearner's dictionaries, an unclear understanding of the two theoretical issues offunctions of the illustrative example and relationships of the example with the othercomponents in an article, and a single and monotomous research perspective andmethod. The present study intends to overcome the drawbacks above and establish aset of exemplifying principles for PDFL which may reflect both the laws of L2lexicon acquisition and instruction and the inherent laws of selecting and presentingexamples. Also, this study plans to make a survey of the exemplification in ChineseEnglish Dictionary for foreign learners according to those exemplifying principles,with an aim of giving feedback on its exemplification.First, the present dissertation collects and organizes the developments ofresearch on exemplifying problems, makes a survey of exemplifying features ofEnglish learner's dictionaries and exemplifying strategies employed by their editors,and clarifies the the two theoretical issues of functions of the illustrative example andrelationships of the example with the other components in an article. Then thepresent dissertation, incorporating three research perspectives (lexcigraphicalperspective, second language acquisition perspetive and publishing perspective) andemploying the inductive method in combination with the deductive method, startsfrom the basic (general) task of lexicographers, concretizes the factors influencingexemplification step by step by make hierarchical deductions, and on the basis of those factors establishes a system of exemplifying principles. Finally, the presentstudy makes a survey of the exemplification in Chinese English Dictionary and putsforward a solution scheme for the exemplification problems in the dictionary.The main findings and conclusions of the present study are as follows:exemplification in PDFL is a process by which lexicographers control and manipulatelinguistic evidence to make it adapt to the objective description of a word, to theoptimization of cognitive effectiveness of language input, and to the restrictions ofpublishing factors; exemplifying principles are an open system in which logicalthreads crisscross; there is much room for the exemplification in Chinese EnglishDictionary; exemplifying is a complicated process involving many editing factors,and in order to improve exemplification in a dictionary, not only are exemplifyingprinciples to be formulated and followed, but also the indirect effects of many otherediting factors on exemplification should be controlled; functions of the example are ahierarchical double-perspective system within which the primary and secondaryfunctions should be distinguished; the microstructure in an article is an orderedstructure with components of variable kinds of nature and functions which areconnected by multiple semantic relationships.The present study adopts a fresh approach to formulating exemplifyingprinciples, and its main findings and conclusions may on the one hand enrichlexicographical theories and on the other hand guide exemplification practice.