A Study Of The Representation Strategy Of Adjective-adverb Lexemes In Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (8^th Edition)

Heterosemy refers to the phenomenon that a lexeme or a type word belongs to more than one lexical category in the lexicon of a communal language. Grammatical multi-functionality of type words in analytic languages, such as modern English and modern Chinese, remains a thorny and highlighted issue. On the basis of previous studies, it is found that modern English has a large amount and variety of multi-category words. As one of the analytic languages, the degree of the analyticity of Chinese is slightly higher than that of English. Theoretically speaking, the proportion of adjective-adverb lexemes in modern Chinese should be higher than that in English. In the studies of Chinese word classes, there is a consensus among Chinese linguistics that we should follow the “principle of simplicity” which argues for fewest possible multi-category words. As a result, this misunderstanding has brought about adverse phenomenon like incompleteness in senses and mismatching among word class labeling, definition and exemplification, and make a false impression that the number of multi-category words in modern Chinese is far smaller than that in modern English. Adjectives and adverbs are highly complex and significantly less studied than other major lexical categories such as nouns or verbs. As one kind of heterosemy, adjective-adverb lexemes also have its own characteristics. Although the phenomenon of adjective-adverb lexemes has existed for a long time, it has not obtained as much attention as it should. The majority of Chinese linguistics has been limited by traditional word class theories, and has had an ill-defined division of the functions of adjectives and adverbs, which is embodied in the construal of word classes and lexicographical translation in Chinese and C-E dictionaries. As both modern English and modern Chinese are analytic languages, this study is intended to probe into the representation of adjective-adverb lexemes in English, hoping to provide some enlightenment to modern Chinese.From the perspective of Two-level Word Class Categorization, this essay first makes a comprehensive investigation of the representation of adjective-adverb lexemes in Oxford Advanced Learner's English Dictionary(8th ed.)(OALD8), including the condition of sense arrangement, the application of defining metalanguage and the allocation of exemplification. Later, on the basis of China National Corpus(CNC) and DIY database of adjective-adverb lexemes in OALD8 and The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary(6th ed.)(CCD6), a case study of ‘zheng shi' will be conducted, and the causes behind the huge difference of the amount and representation of adjective-adverb lexemes between OALD8 and CCD6 will be explored. The statistical analysis shows the representation strategy employed in OALD8 is characteristic of systematicness and scientificity, while the proportion of adjective-adverb lexemes in CCD6 is much lower than in OALD8, and some word class labeling of adjective-adverb lexemes in CCD6 is different from the unmarked conventionalized propositional speech acts in CNC. In the end, it reveals that it is caused by invalid theoretical basis and deficient research methods. It is strongly suggested that the significance of corpora and TWCC count for a lot in the compilation of Chinese dictionaries.This study can not only help to make a meaningful exploration in the representation strategy of heterosemy in English, but can also shed light on the microstructure representation strategy of heterosemy in modern Chinese dictionaries.