A Study Of The Treatment Of Contronymy In English Learner’s Dictionaries

Polysemy is not only a heated topic in linguistics, but also a hard nut to crack inlexicography due to its pervasiveness. Contronymy, as a sub-category of polysemy,which is often described as the phenomenon of meanings opposition within one word,has also received wide attention. Some researches concerning contronymy mainlyinclude the reasons for occurrence of two opposite meanings, the classification ofcontronyms, the cognitive mechanism for construing contronyms and the realisticsignificance of its application etc., while the study of the treatment of contronymy inEnglish learner’s dictionaries is still blank now.Under the theoretical guidance of Usage-Based theory, this paper will make aprofound study of the status and problems of the treatment of contronymy in “Bigfive”：The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (7th edition)(OALD7for short),Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (4th edition)(LDOCE4for short),Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (5th edition)(COBUILD5forshort), Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (1th edition)(MCED1for short), Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of English (1th edition)(CALD1for short) with the statistics provided by DIY databases of “Big five”. It isfound that there remain great disparities in the treatment of contronymy in “Big five”because of the unsystematic investigation of the usage pattern of lexemes.Specifically speaking, the difference resides in the structure presentation of twoopposite meanings and the shortage of senses. This thesis comes to conclusion thatby investigating the actual usage pattern of lexemes in large balanced corpora,subjective judgment can be avoided well and the labeling of sense items can be madetimely.This study will not only optimize the research on the treatment of contronymy inEnglish learner’s dictionaries, but can also deepen the theoretical research oncontronymy.