Towards A Better Method Of Sense Ordering In English-Chinese Learner's Dictionaries

Sense ordering is a crucial issue in dictionary making. It is especially important in an English-Chinese learner's dictionary which is dedicated to helping Chinese learners to the greatest extent. With the development of polysemous words, the difficulties of learning them are ever greater. Thus, the issue of sense ordering in an English-Chinese learner's dictionary is considered to be more and more important nowadays. That's why I choose to do research on this issue.There are three traditional methods of sense ordering in a dictionary, i.e. historical ordering, logical ordering and frequent ordering which can provide learners with the information on three different relations of senses in a polysemous word and help them to study polysemous words. As to sense ordering in an English - Chinese learner's dictionary, the three methods should be used together because learner's dictionary is dedicated to helping learners to the greatest extent and it will be better for learners' study of polysemous words if they can get more information through sense ordering.Based on a lot of investigation on seven leading English dictionaries, this thesis tries to conclude their advantages and disadvantages in their treatment on sense ordering. It also tries to seek out a better method so that the three traditional methods are applied coherently in sense ordering.The method is listed below:1. To those words with a few senses, the combination of three methods is accomplished by using the structure of text which is called the method of text structure in this thesis.2. To those with a lot of senses, the combination of three methods is accomplished by using the structure of a graph which is called t the method of graph structure in this thesis.This method can also speed up the process of searching. It contributes to the comprehension, memorization of polysemous words thus it is meaningful to learners. What's more, it is of some significance in the art of dictionary making as well as in second-language teaching.