Separable Words In Modern Chinese Lexicography

A separable word refers to one of the most special kinds of linguistic units in modern Chinese, the structure of which is so loose that other components can be inserted between the original elements. Therefore, it is hard to define whether it is a word or a phrase. Many scholars have been discussing about the linguistic unit of this kind so far, which concerns the definition, way of expansion, separable motivation and so on. However, the treatment of separable words in Chinese dictionaries has seldom been touched upon, which is of great significance for dictionary compilation and teaching Chinese as a foreign language.In view of this, this study has chosen two authoritative Chinese dictionaries: The Commercial Press Learner's Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese (2007) (LDCC for short) and The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary) (5th edition) (2005) (CCD5 for short) which both select and label separable words within their coverage. This thesis, based on the data from LDCC and CCD5 and modern Chinese corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU (CCL Corpus for short), tries to make a comprehensive investigation of the treatment of separable words in LDCC and CCD5 in the framework of Usage-based Theory from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. By comparison, we have collected 101 lexemes which are treated differently in two dictionaries and have divided them into four groups. The frequency of use, lexicalization and labeling of these lexemes are the focus of our discussion.The statistical analysis of the 101 lexemes shows that the category of linguistic units is a dynamic and developing process. Separable words are the transitional states between phrases and words, which emerge from language use and are entrenched in the use of high-frequency. After statistical analysis and discussion, we have found that the selection of entries and labeling of some separable words in LDCC and CCD5 are problematic. The accurate and consistent compilation of dictionary should be based on usage of patterns of words in large-scaled Chinese corpora.This study integrates quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis and investigates the inconsistent criteria in dictionary compilation. Therefore, it has both theoretical and practical importance for dictionary compilation. It also sheds some light on the research of separable words in Chinese research on ontology.