A Functional-Cognitive Study Of Sentence Definitions In Collins COBUILD English Dictionary

Definition is one of the most important components in the microstructure of a dictionary. This is because not only "nearly all that dictionary compilers do have something to do with how to treat meanings in a dictionary directly or indirectly" (Zugusta, 1971: 21), but also "the main function of a dictionary lies in explaining, describing and defining words, and the quality of a dictionary depends on that of its definitions" (Jackson, 2002: 86). That is why dictionary definitions have attracted great attention. Researches show that dictionary definitions in different periods are influenced respectively by the main linguistic schools in that period, for example, historical-comparative linguistics, structural linguistics, and T-G grammar all exert a major influence on dictionary definitions, and some more brilliant success has been attained too. However, "these traditional linguistics pay undue attention to the internal structure of language, and neglect the speech activities transmitted by the defined word. In simple words, the traditional dictionary definitions focus on generality and abstractness, but ignore the fact that meaning is assigned to words in actual use" (Xu Hai, 2002). The traditional dictionary definitions focus on isolated, static meanings and stress written language. It is still hard to see that spoken language enters the dictionary definitions. Furthermore, the user's cognitive perspectives and the user-friendliness of a dictionary are also not paid more attention to. As for the dictionary definition style, lexicographers tend to follow the principle of substitutability, reductionism, and sufficient and necessary conditions. So, the traditional dictionary definitions are predominantly the phrasal forms.With the occurrence and development of the modern linguistics, especially functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics, dictionary compilers are provided with new theoretical foundations of linguistics, which offer new perspectives for re-thinking the dictionary definition style. COBUILD with its contextual full-sentence definitions brings a revolutionary innovation to the dictionary-making circle and forms a challenge to the traditional phrasal definition style. Therefore, the present study aims at analyzing the scientific and practical values of the full-sentence definition style in COBUILD under the theoretical framework of functional and cognitive linguistics, and pointing out that this kind of definitions is the representation of the two linguistic studies on dictionary definitions: (a) The sentence definitions are the representation of the studies of functional context theory and textual information structure in functional linguistics. The argument that words have their specific meanings only in actual context is also applied to the explanations of words in a dictionary. Therefore, the concepts of context, text and communication should become the indispensable components of the dictionary definitions. Through context, meaning can be recognized completely so as to lay the cornerstone of the dictionary definitions; through the contextual indication, meaning can be completely shown in general-purpose dictionary; through context, meaning component analysis can be done widely in order to provide conditions for the scientific definitions, (b) The sentence definitions are the representation of the studies of best and biggest relevance effect, best triggering effect and image schema in cognitive linguistics. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, dictionary definition device is part of cognitive psychological device of human beings, and is the production of mental activities of human beings. Cognitive semantics is also the one that has the most quotable significance to the dictionary definitions. In sum, "dictionary making is essentially a social-cultural behavior and dictionary use is by nature socio-psychological" (Yong Heming, 2007:1).Through analysis and contrast, three strengths about the full-sentence definitions in COBUILD are finally presented: supplying rich contextual information, imitating user's cognitive sense, and improving user-friendliness. Facts have proved that now many English learner's dictionaries have improved the traditional phrasal definition style, and adopted the full-sentence definition style for the whole or part headwords. We are also trying to seek the best points of attachment of the sentence definitions between COBUILD and Chinese learner's dictionary and E-C bilingual dictionary. Moreover, the sentence definitions have much valuable enlightenment to foreign language teaching and learning, especially vocabulary teaching and learning. At the same time, we also bring up our own views to some disputed issues, in order to develop and improve the sentence definition style further.