A Study Of Wordhood Representation In The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language(5^th Ed.)

The studies of wordhood and lexicalization have been a hot and eye-catching issue in recent years’ linguistic study, which have been fiercely discussed for many years. It is difficult to distinguish whether a unit is a word or not in modern Chinese grammar which was studied by Wang Renqiang(2011) in his research A Cognitive Study of Wordhood in Modern Chinese: Based on the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary(5th edition), showing that the wordhood in modern Chinese has prototype effect. Most studies on wordhood in modern English are done from the perspectives of syntax, word formation or morphology, but there is a lack of relevant empirical studies on wordhood representation in modern English.From the perspective of language as a complex adaptive system, this thesis tends to examine the wordhood representation in a native dictionary of English on the basis of the DIY Database of the Word Class Labeling Information in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language(5th edition), so as to analyze the current status of wordhood in modern English in depth. This research has found that words in modern English are labeled with word class on the basis of distinguishing words and nonwords, and these entries with word class labeling account for 90.40% in the whole entries included in the selected dictionary; the wordhood in modern English as recognized in AHD-5 shows the prototype effects, the most prototypical member is single words, and then these compound words with space(s), while these combining forms and compound words both with hyphen(s) and space(s) are the non-prototypical members; strictly speaking, among these 22960 entries of combining forms and compound words with hyphen(s) or space(s) or both in this selected dictionary, there are 20346 entries(account for 88.61%) which have gained the lexical status and included as headwords in the dictionary with corresponding word class labeling via conventionalization and lexicalization; the status of wordhood in modern English is a fluid and dynamic process of language change, which is the result of the mutual interaction between human cognitive awareness and language practical use.This study not only helps to deepen the research on the wordhood representation in modern English, but also promotes important implications for these studies on word class in modern Chinese and these on word class labeling in Chinese or learners of Chinese dictionaries.