A Comparative Study On The Homonyms Of The 5^th And 6^th Editions Of The Modern Chinese Dictionary

As the initial work devoted to arranging and regulating the modern Chinese, Modern Chinese Dictionary has not only achieved a new high in terms of academic theory, writing skill and compiling quality but also made the unprecedented innovation and attempt in the word listing, character and word form processing, notation, paraphrase and part-of-speech tagging. Among them, it has highlighted the notation and differentiation between perfect homophone and polysemous word.From the first edition to the sixth edition, Modern Chinese Dictionary keeps pace with the times in terms of the definition and interpretation of perfect homophone and polysemous word and thus represented the latest research achievement in two aspects above.This paper has made an exhaustive collection and analysis of the one-syllable perfect homophone in the fifth and sixth editions of the dictionary. It has also discussed the development of the perfect homophone in modern Chinese language and the countermeasure adopted in Modern Chinese Dictionary. In addition, this paper has also studied the perfect homophone and polysemy in the modern Chinese as well as offered some advice for the revision of the dictionary. Through the exhaustive reference to the fifth and sixth editions of the dictionary, this paper has classified the changeable one-syllable perfect homophone into three groups, namely the addition, deletion and integration of the entries, the adjustment of entries and definition as well as the special-case analysis and the improvement on the compiling design. Hence, this paper has analyzed the cause, effect and rationality of the revision accordingly.Based on the study above, it is found that the sixth edition is revised around the fifth edition. The analysis from the perspective of one-syllable perfect homophone can reflect the objective law of language development and also strictly conform to the principle of gathering the words in the standard dictionary. According to the economic and accurate tendency of language development, some measures, such as the addition, deletion, integration, disintegration and the improvement on explanatory phrase and compiling style, have been taken. The research result shows that sixth edition is still seen as a success despite some flaws. It can observe the standard dictionary of language development and thus satisfy the need of the reading public.