An Empirical Study Of Chinese Interjection From The Perspective Of The Two-level Word Class Categorization In Analytic Languages

Word class systems are the most fundamental elements of language, and the study of word classes or parts of speech (POS) have become a hot and difficult issue in recent20or30years. Because Chinese, as a typical analytic language, is lack of morphological changes, the word class research of which intensively reflects on the treatment of multifunctionality. The study of word classes has always been a tough issue in Chinese grammatical researches. Consequently, the study on POS labeling of Chinese dictionaries also becomes a thorny issue in dictionary compilation. With the rapid development of international academic exchange, the accuracy of POS labeling in Chinese dictionaries which made for foreign learners whose mother tongue is not Chinese becomes more and more important. Particularly, the accuracy of the POS labeling of interjections which can express emotions and convey intentions will affect daily communication between speakers and listeners. The POS labeling of discipline-related or function-related entries in dictionaries has become a theoretical concern in recent years. However, in-depth study on the POS labeling of interjection lexemes has not been touched by scholars.Given that both Chinese and English are analytic languages, those two languages are comparable. This research focuses on the interjection lexemes in Learner’s Dictionary of Modern Chinese (1995)(LDMC for short). With the help of large scale balanced corpora, this study probes into the POS labeling of those interjection entries in both Chinese and English dictionaries in the light of the two-level word class categorization model in analytic languages (TWCC for short). At the same time, this paper also takes the English interjection lexemes in Oxford Advanced Leaner’s Dictionary (8th edition)(OALD8for short) to make a comparative study with those Chinese interjection lexemes in LDMC, so as to deepen the research on Chinese word class. Based on the interjection lexemes retrieved from LDMC, this thesis makes a comparison on the POS labeling among LDMC, Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (6th edition)(CCD6for short) and Modern Chinese Standard Dictionary (2nd edition)(MCSD2for short) in order to collect the research objects. And it also carries out a Chinese-English comparative study between LDMC and OALD8to found out more research questions. The results shows that there are only47interjections, and the proportion of multiple class membership of interjection lexemes occupy23.4%of the total; and there are11interjection lexemes in LDMC labeled differently with the other two Chinese dictionaries. However, OALD8collects237interjection lexemes, and the multiple class membership of interjection lexemes occupies30.5%. Then with the help of Internet-ZH corpus in Sketch Engine and internet corpus, this thesis retrieves the concordance lines of the controversially labeled interjection entries with the purpose of investigating their unmarked grammatical functions. It has been found that the POS labeling of interjection lexemes in Chinese dictionaries does not recognize the fact that “the word class categorization involves two-level (the class membership of a word token in syntax at parole and the class membership of a word type in lexicon at langue)(Wang Renqiang,2014)”, and blindly follows the “Principle of Simplicity”, thus the amount of multi-category words are minimized artificially. Moreover, in LDMC, there are some omissions on the POS labeling of interjection lexemes which are not interjection entries originally.This thesis adopts a new theoretical perspective and integrates the qualitative and quantitative research methods to conduct an empirical study on the POS labeling of modern Chinese interjections. Thus this study not only deepens the research on the POS labeling of Chinese word class, but also promotes the international communication.