On Chinese-English Bilingual Thesauri Compilation

Words are classified into categories at different levels in a thesaurus,not according to their pronunciations or orthography,but according to their significations or concepts. A thesaurus may be of great help to users in language production,vocabulary acquisition,linguistic research,and so on.However,because of the uniqueness of a thesaurus,it is difficult to deal with some of the key issues in thesaurus compilation, including the compiling concepts,the arrangement of words,the macrostructure and microstructure.In current Chinese-English bilingual thesauri,problems exist in classification, macrostructure and microstructure.Fortunately,the development of linguistics, especially the field theory and the theory of mental lexicon,has offered theoretical support to thesaurus compilation.Meanwhile,some English and Chinese monolingual thesauri have provided practical support to Chinese-English bilingual thesaurus compilation.Through case studies of three monolingual thesauri(i.e.TEWP,LLC,and CDS) and three current Chinese-English bilingual thesauri(i.e.CEEK,CCEDI and NCCCED),the thesis analyzes some common problems of them,such as the confusion in classifying concepts,imbalance in selection of words,inadequacy of information categories in macrostructure and microstructure.To solve these problems,this thesis has put forward some suggestions on these aspects.First,the classification in a C-E bilingual thesaurus should be hierarchical and convenient for searching,and follow the classification of a Chinese thesaurus.Word items should be arranged into classes at different levels which correspond with the structure in mental lexicon.The theory of prototype and basic level categories may help to set up classes and levels.Secondly,in macrostructure,the selection of words should cover all fields and keep a balance between words in objective and subjective world.The index may be arranged by pinyin or strokes of Chinese characters.For a polysemous word,a cross-reference is needed.Proper pictorial illustrations and appendices are necessary as well. Thirdly,as much information in microstructure as possible should be given according to the size and range of users of the C-E thesaurus.Equivalents in the target language should be equal to the word in the source language in conceptual meaning as well as in connotative,grammatical,cultural and collocative meanings.Chinese and English illustrative examples are helpful for users to understand the meanings and usages of a word.Part of speech,phonological information and grammatical information should also be given to a word in the minimum categories,in which word items should be arranged in a certain order.A sample of the minimum category "horse" is given to show the microstructure of a C-E bilingual thesaurus.