A Frame-based Terminology Approach To Bilingual Specialized Learner Lexicography

With the ongoing reformation of College English Teaching in China,teaching of English for Specific Purposes(hereafter ESP teaching)has undergone rapid development and attracted considerable attention from researchers in recent years.Traditionally,a substantial focus of ESP teaching in China is on the decoding needs of learners.However,recently,the focus has been shified more towards the encoding needs in specialized language activities,and the learning autonomy of ESP learners has also been emphasized.Hence,specialized dictionaries for learners(ESP learners in particular)(hereafter SLDs),are called for to lend support to ESP teaching.Nevertheless,confined by traditional specialized lexicography and theories of General Terminology,specialized dictionaries(hereafter SDs)available still largely follows the lexicographical tradition of hard words and fail to perform their functions as an aid to the acquisition of the knowledge of specialized language on the part of ESP learners.Statistics show that,despite a proliferation of SDs in foreign languages,dictionaries that give merely lists of terminological equivalents or offer encyclopedic explications of concepts still dominate the SD family.SDs serving the encoding purposes account for only a very limited proportion.Besides,the design features of these dictionaries can satisfy the ESP teaching needs only partially.With the emergence of descriptive terminology,terminologists no longer exclude verbs,adjectives and other parts of speech from their research fields and begin to show interest in the semantic and syntactic dimensions of terms.This contributes to the lexicographical innovations and lays the theoretical foundation for designing a new type of SDs to meet learners' dual need for specialized language reception and production.Given the ESP teaching needs,the status quo of SD publication and the recent development in Terminology,the present study attempts to probe further into the research and compilation of SLDs.Researchers have so far shown comparatively limited interest in the design features of SLDs in general;studies devoted to this issue display some inadequacy.On the one hand,design features reflect the designers' conception of dictionary and the theories behind dictionary design.On the other hand,they can only be described with reference to dictionary texts serving specific purposes.Therefore,they are regarded as the interface between the lexicographic practice and theory.Design features of general learners' dictionaries have received in-depth investigation.In contrast,there is only sporadic literature on design features of SLDs.Although theoretical progress has been made in this respect,there remain the following two major problems:(1)Researchers diverge not only in their approaches to,but also in their focuses on,SLDs' design features.As a result,their views are very unsystematic,if not confusing,in some cases.(2)Many researchers rely heavily on general learner lexicography and pay scant attention to the peculiarities of SLD,hence the partial understanding of SLDs as "SDs plus encoding linguistic information".On this account,the present author attempts a comprehensive study of the design features of bilingual specialized learner's dictionaries(hereafter BSLDs).Specifically,the present author conducts a critical review of the practical and theoretical research on SLDs,investigates the peculiarities of BSLDs,and explores the theoretical basis for SLDs' design features from the perspective of Frame-based Terminology.Based on a case study of English-Chinese meteorology dictionaries for learners(hereafter ECMDLs),the present author also discusses the compound frame building,the innovative textual presentation and the concrete technical realization of BSLDs' design.BSLDs deal primarily with specialized words or terms and demonstrate apparent peculiarities.Accordingly,lexicographers,while conceiving the design of BSLDs,can draw upon inspirations from Terminology.The present author discusses BSLDs' peculiarities in terms of the following three aspects:typological classification,textual function and users' needs.Typological classification helps pin down what to design,the analysis of textual functions indicates the information categories to be covered by BSLDs,and the study of users' needs provides valuable insight into the presentation of the selected information.The descriptive turn of Terminology has blurred the boundary between terms and words and brought the contextualization of terms to researchers' attention.ESP teaching shows a practical tendency and strives for in-depth acquisition of specialized lexical knowledge with equal stress on both decoding and encoding activities.The definition of terms,the representation of conceptual relations and the description of syntactic dimension as proposed by Frame-based Terminology can meet users' needs for in-depth acquisition of specialized vocabulary,which aims at the precision of meaning,comprehensive word knowledge and lexical association.The prototype domain event,definition template,conceptual network and authentic context can also lend themselves to the contextualization of linguistic and specialized knowledge.Based on the theoretical reflections upon Frame-based Terminology,the present author uses ECMDLs as an example and looks into the idiosyncrasies of BSLDs' design.The present author holds that the peculiar designing features of BSLDs are embodied in the contextualized description of specialized vocabulary including terms,and the essence lies in building both the knowledge frame and the language frame for lexicographical entries.The knowledge frame can be identified at two levels,i.e.the macro-level and the micro-level.The former refers to knowledge about the subject field,including the scope and subdivisions of the subject field;the latter is about conceptual knowledge consisting of hierarchical and non-hierarchical relations between concepts.As for the construction of the knowledge frame,lexicographers should define the disciplinary scope of BSLD as a single subject field in the sense of the secondary discipline,provide an introduction to the subdivisions of the field,and explain the interrelations between them.Furthermore,lexicographers also need to describe the conceptual nature and semantic roles of the specialized lexicon,specify the conceptual relations that might be activated in certain contexts and represent them by means of such lexicographical devices as definitions,sample sentences and pictorial illustrations.The language frame of ECMDLs can be depicted by means of two dimensions of the entry word,i.e.syntagmatic and paradigmatic.The former refers to the syntactic and collocational properties of the entry word;the latter includes semantics-related information involving polysemy,synonymy,antonymy,derivation and other selection-oriented semantic relations.The syntagmatic dimension of specialized vocabulary or terms sets criteria for lemma selection,sample sentence collection and definition writing in ECMDLs.The paradigmatic dimension of specialized vocabulary or terms imposes further requirements for the layout of lexicographical information and the application of cross-references in ECMDLs.Since the two frames are built in functional complementarity and coordination with each other,lexicographers should represent them in an integrated fashion while designing a compound frame for ECMDLs.The representation of ECMDLs' compound frame should not only lay emphasis on information categories and their textual presentation,but also allow for the relations or complementation between information items as well as their accessibility and readability to users.The present author gives an account of the information categories used to represent the compound frame in terms of ECMDLs' textual components,i.e.macro-structure,micro-structure and outside matters.At the macro-structural level,lemma selection needs to take into account specialized vocabulary or terms of different parts of speech(nouns,adjectives,verbs,etc.),the subdivisions of meteorology,and its relation to the adjacent subject fields.At the micro-structural level are two major categories of information:formal comment and semantic comment.The former involves spelling(word formation counted),pronunciation,word class,inflections,etc.The latter consists mainly of glossing,definitions,sample sentences and pictorial illustrations.Information in the outside matters of ECMDLs falls into two categories,i.e.the usage-related information and the function-related information.Only the latter participates in the representation of the compound frame,which comprises a meteorology introduction,whole-page illustrations,language hints,thematic classifications,etc.Because some elements cut across several structural levels and involve different information categories,it is important to rebuild relations and complementation between these elements and improve their accessibility and readability.Corpora are the primary data source of ECMDLs,and corpus concordancers as well as term extractors can be used to retrieve data for ECMDL compilation.To build a corpus to the requirements of data retrieval,lexicographers should specify the typological features of the corpus,the size,the criteria for text selection,and the extent to which selected texts are processed.Terms,collocations and conceptual/semantic relations can be used as a basis for creating various categories of lexicographical information.Word Sketch Engine,TermoStat and TerminoWeb are instrumental in retrieving the afore-mentioned data from the corpus of meteorology English.In order to show the workflow of ECMDLs' technical realization,the present research proposes a three-stage model,which consists of corpus building,data retrieval and textual representation.Corpus building is the preparatory stage of technical realization,data retrieval the implementing stage,and textual representation the application stage.Although they follow one after another,the three stages maintain their own relative independence.The present author also designs sample entries for five typical terms(i.e.advect,atmospheric,etc.).They demonstrate how the relatively compound frame can be transformed into concrete textual information,thus verify the operability of the model.The present study carries both theoretical and practical significance for specialized learner lexicography.Theoretically speaking,the investigation of BSLDs' peculiarities dispels some misconception of this particular type of dictionary.The present study broadens the research view of specialized(learner)lexicography by applying Terminology theories selectively.It also looks into the construction of compound frame and the three dimensions of design features,which further advances the development of specialized learner lexicography.As far as lexicographical practice is concerned,the present study illustrates BSLDs' design features with examples from the field of meteorology and displays a clear orientation toward the applied aspects of lexicography.It examines the technical features of BSLD design,which offers a practical approach to data retrieval.Besides,the present study picks out five typical terms and designs sample entries for them,which can be used as models for entry writing in future lexicographical practice.