Towards A "Frame"-Based Treatment Of Examples In CELD For Chinese EFL Learners

CELD is a very important learning tool assisting the Chinese EFL learners' English learning. Exemplification system is a key part for the users of CELD searching for important linguistic information.The present study aims at tackling example treatment in CELD for Chinese EFL learners in light of the theory of Frame Semantics and the on-line lexicographical project FrameNet, so as to establish a model for the examples in a user-oriented CELD for Chinese EFL learners.A survey was conducted to investigate the EFL learners' attitudes towards the present CEDs they were using and the information they were expecting to get from CEDs. A case study concerning three mainstream CEDs was carried out to show the defects of treatment of examples in the domestic CED compilation. The main finding of this part of research should be: the examples in CELD for Chinese EFL learners should be English-oriented. That is to say, the examples should be oriented to show the semantic and grammatical information of those English equivalents. In this way, the users could select the most appropriate word or phrase for their target context At the same time, they could also grasp the correct way to use the word or phrase in the light of the English-oriented examples.As the theoretical support for the selection and construction of the examples in CELD, the theory of Frame Semantics and the on-line lexicographical project FrameNet were applied. Frame Semantics and FN use Lexical Unit to designate an English word taken in one of its meanings. What's more, the concepts related to the LU are taken as Frame Elements and are concluded together with the LU in the target frame. The annotated FN database presents the semantic and syntactic features of the FEs in a semantic frame, in this way, the relationship between the FEs and the LU got analyzed and the semantic and syntactic valence pattern of the target word could be...