Xinhua Dictionary11Version7Variant Forms Comparative Study

Throughout history, in the compilation of dictionaries, intractable problems are facedduring the process of collection of head words--variants. There are gobs of variants in ancientlexicographical book Shuowen Jiezi and The Kangxi Dictionary which cause inconvenience toword quantity statistics and its usage. After the founding of New China, simplified charactersare implemented gradually, and parts of variants are eliminated. But the number of variantsare still serious considerable. So the thorny question remained how to deal with variants in thecompilation of dictionaries.This paper does a complete and exhaustive research on variants in five editions of XinhuaDictionary, analyzes and sums up some experiences and lessons, then points out theinsufficiency referring to dictionary compilation theory and the results of state languagepolicy about variants in Xinhua Dictionary. Which make some suggestions and opinions forfuture Xinhua compilation.The paper is divided into six chapters, the main content of the chapters are as follows:Chapter one is an introduction, mainly introduces Xinhua Dictionary and theoreticalachievements of its variants.The second, three, four, five chapters are the main body parts of the paper.The second chapter makes a general description of the identification and collection ofvariants in Xinhua Dictionary. Firstly, it discusses the concept of variants and points out itsconcept that is used in this paper. On this basis, it expounds the labeling and the presentcollection of variants in five versions of Xinhua Dictionary.The third and fourth chapters make some comparative studies on variants among the7thto11th Xinhua Dictionary. The third part involves contrast from7th to9th, and the fourthpart is about the9th to11th. At first, the two chapters classify the variants in five editions.Then, each type of variant is analyzed horizontally and vertically. It mainly identifies thedifferences between different editions and explores the reasons or looks for solutions.The fifth chapter scans the amendments of the five versions from a dictionary learningand standard Chinese perspective. It solves the problems which are presented in the twoprevious chapters and puts forward proposals for variants collection theorematically.