On The Representation Of Adverb Collocation In English-Chinese Learner’s Dictionary: From User Perspective

Collocation is crucially important in language acquisition, and it has a greatinfluence on learners’ second language producing competence. In recent years, greatachievements have been obtained in lexicography on collocation representation inlearners’ dictionary. But with more in-depth investigating, it shows that most of theresearches focused on the large word classes as verb, noun and adjective as well, fewof them have mentioned the adverb. However, the fact is that Chinese learners arefairly weak in the use of adverbs, which gives this research practical significance.Therefore, the study is dedicated to work out more effective ways of adverbcollocation representation from user perspective, and evidences are collected fromtheoretical argument and empirical study.Primary linguistic data in this study are from CLEC, ICLE, LOB and BNC aswell when needed. Firstly, the author collects all the wrong adverb collocations inCLEC and describes and analyzes the causes, expecting to get more detailedunderstanding of Chinese learners’ difficulty in adverb collocation producing.Secondly, the author makes an investigation into two English learner’s dictionariesand two domestic English-Chinese dictionaries on their adverb collocationpresentation methods. Comparative studies are made on certain aspects. Finally,considering the present situation of Chinese English learners and the dealing ofadverbs in current dictionaries, the author, taking user perspective as starting point,proposes some tentative suggestions on constructing the systematic way of adverbcollocation representation. The optimization strategies on collocation representationinclude typicality and equilibrium on collocation selection. Special concerns onadverb collocation include:1) the setting of bilingual navigation bar;2) informationof semantic prosody;3) adverb collocation columns under possible entries;4) usageinformation (mainly about grammar notes and the position of modifier).The study is beneficial both theoretically and practically. On one hand, the model constructed in this study sets a theoretical foundation for the future study onthe representation system of English-Chinese learners’ dictionaries. On the otherhand, it mixes functional theory with Error Analysis theory and proposes solutions tothe present issue from user perspective, which is meaningful and instructive to thefuture dictionary making practice.