A Study Of Word Class Labeling In Chinese-French Learner’s Dictionaries

Word classification is always the core issue in linguistic research, and word classification in analytic languages, like Chinese, English and Tongan, is a “Goldbach’s conjecture” type problem with nearly 400 years. In the domain of lexicography, POS(part of speech) recognition in Chinese/ Chinese-foreign language Learner’s dictionaries plays an important role which can affect the whole. As for Chinese dictionaries, the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary didn’t label the lemmas with word classes until its fifth edition in 2005, in which achievements and problems coexist; as for Chinese-foreign language dictionaries, their word class labelling is based on the Chinese dictionaries, which means they have the same problems. What’s more, there are few researches on the Chinese-foreign language dictionaries’ word class labelling. In the light of this, the thesis makes a comprehensive and deep survey on the word class labelling of the Chinese-French part of Concise French-Chinese Chinese-French Dictionary(3rd editon).After a review of the studies on Chinese language word classification, Chinese dictionaries word class labelling and Chinese-foreign language dictionaries word class labelling, based on the Concise French-Chinese Chinese-French Dictionary(3rd etidion) Chinese-French part word class labeling database, from the perspective of language as Complex Adaptive System theory and Theory of Norms and Exploitations, an systematic and in-depth survey is conducted on the aspects of recognition of word classification, accuracy of word class labelling and implementation of the Principle of Translating by Word Class. The survey suggests: the 12-word-class labelling system is adopted in this dictionary and a better strategy is found on some of the onomatopoeias; there exists a problem on the distinction between words and non-words, especially the distinction between words and phrases; the number of multi-category words is influenced by the Principle of Simplicity; the dictionary compilers do a good job on the implementation of the Principle of Translating by Word Class.This survey fills the vacancy in the study of the word class labelling of Chinese-French dictionaries, enriching the studies on Chinese-foreign language learner’s dictionaries word class labelling. It also contributes to the dictionary compilation, Chinese dictionary word class labelling study and modern Chinese grammar study.