An Empirical Study Of The Word Class Labeling Of Multi-category Words In Chinese Collocation Dictionaries

Issues concerning word classes are controversial and knotty, while issues concerning multiple class membership are quite tough to handle with in the domain of word class labeling in modern Chinese dictionaries, which can be seen as a case that a slight move in one part may affect the situation as a whole. Previous studies of multiple class membership concern such disciplines as corpus linguistics,lexicography, cognitive linguistics, etc. In the domain of lexicography, scholars have studied multi-category words or certain kinds of multi-category words or certain aspects of multi-category words in general-purpose dictionaries or in corpora.Studies of multi-category words in collocation dictionaries have not been touched upon yet but are in need of exploration. Studies on collocation contribute greatly to studies concerning language teaching, dictionary compilation, natural language processing, and so on and so forth, and a scientific and reasonable collocation dictionary helps a lot in collocation learning and study. To compile a collocation dictionary calls for the adherence to both the general rules of dictionary compilation and the specific principles of collocation dictionary compilation in consideration of its uniqueness. What’s more, dictionary compilers are supposed to pay more attention to the word class labeling of multi-category words when compiling a collocation dictionary due to the special characteristics of multi-category words.Based on the Modern Chinese Corpus of the Centre for Chinese Linguistics in Peking University, combined with the Lexicon of Common Words in Contemporary Chinese(2008), and taking the Collocation Dictionary of Modern Chinese Notional Words as a basis, the thesis will conduct an empirical study in terms of the word class labeling of the chosen 150 items from the perspective of the Two-Level Word Class Categorization Model, hoping to find out the existing problems in terms of the word class labeling of multi-category words, to explore the reasons that result in the problems, and finally to better and perfect the word class labeling of multi-categorywords in collocation dictionaries. After the empirical corpus-based survey, it is found that there is obvious inconsistency between the word class labeling in the selected collocation dictionary and the word class recognition through corpus-based analysis and that the word class labeling represented in the dictionary fails to authentically reflect the Chinese word class properties in the lexicon at langue. The dictionary compilers are found to artificially minimize the number of multi-category words.Two major causes of these problems are concerned that the dictionary compilers stick to the Principle of Simplicity and that the corpus-based usage patterns surveys are not conducted in the course of dictionary compilation.The empirical study of the word class labeling of multi-category words in Chinese collocation dictionaries is instructive and meaningful to the ontological studies of multiple class membership. It is an advance in terms of dictionary compilation and helps to benefit the target users to a great extent. What’s more, it also contributes to language teaching, translation, natural language processing, and so on and so forth.