Study On Definitions Of Measure Words In Foreign-Oriented Chinese Dictionaries

As the core part of the dictionary, the definitions directly affect whether thedictionary is good or not. Served for those learners whose mother tongues are notChinese, definitions in Foreign-oriented Chinese Dictionaries are also very importantfor compliers who should pay more attentions to. Because of the uniquecharacteristics and requirements of Foreign-oriented Chinese Dictionaries, this kind ofdictionaries is quite different from conventional Chinese Dictionaries served fordomestic users. As a result, definitions in Foreign-oriented Chinese Dictionariesshould be on the basis of studying demands and regular patterns of learners who studyChinese as a foreign language.With a short history, Foreign-oriented Chinese Dictionaries start late and havealready been published for dozens of versions. However, among those versions, fewof them have really been recognized, mainly due to the reason that some definitions inthese dictionaries have directly adapted from conventional Chinese Dictionaries, suchas “Modern Chinese Dictionary”, ignoring learners’ actual needs. Starting from thisconsideration, this thesis selects five Foreign-oriented Chinese Dictionaries, that is,“A Dictionary of Chinese Usage:8000Words”,“Learner’s Dictionary ofContemporary Chinese”,“Commercial Press Learner’s Dictionary of ContemporaryChinese”,“A Chinese-English Dictionary of Measure Words” and “Chinese MeasureWords without Tears”, and makes a contrastive study within these five dictionaries byanalyzing definitions of measure words which is a special word class in Chinese. Thethesis aims to summarize some definitions problems of measure words and suppliessome compiling proposes in the future.The thesis can be divided into four chapters:Chapter One is the foreword part. The reason why this topic is chosen is firstlyintroduced. Then it summarizes the related studies, including compiling history andpresent situation of Foreign-oriented Chinese Dictionaries and study about measurewords. At last, it introduces the study targets, contents and methods of this thesis.Chapter Two is a contrastive study between five chosen dictionaries and “ModernChinese Dictionary” which is an authorized Chinese dictionary. This chapter aims to explore some definition problems of measure words in Foreign-oriented ChineseDictionaries, which are affected by “Modern Chinese Dictionary”.Chapter Three is about definition methods of measure words. It concludes fivemajor methods used in Foreign-oriented Chinese Dictionaries and another threenon-common methods, and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each method.Chapter Four is a study on examples used in definitions of measure words. Byanalyzing the functions of examples in dictionaries, principles of using examples inForeign-oriented Chinese Dictionaries are summarized, which are used to find outsome problems about examples in five dictionaries.