On Collocation Representation In Exemplification Of C-E Dictionary For Chinese EFL Learners-A Case Study

The role of a Chinese-English dictionary for Chinese EFL learners is to provide its users with sufficient instruction to fulfill their productive tasks.When Chinese EFL learners are engaged in encoding activities like writing and translating,it is usually problematic for them to find the accurate words and idiomatic utterance to convey meaning in L2.What happens is after the consultation of Chinese-English dictionaries,learners usually get several English equivalents whose proper usage is unknown to them.When learners are not aware of the proper use of an English word and its collocations,it is more likely for them to revert back to Chinese and produce interference errors.Since there is a positive correlation between the use of collocation and proficiency in language production,opinions are stated that collocations deserve special treatment in the dictionary for EFL learners.Examples illustrating collocations,syntactic behavior and usage of the headword and equivalents are assumed to be helpful.The aim of the present study is to propose criteria for the collocation representation in Chinese-English dictionary for Chinese EFL learners along with some practical suggestions.To achieve this objective,the present study intends to address the following research questions:(1)What are the implications the Lexical Priming Theory can bring to the collocation representation in Chinese-English dictionaries for Chinese EFL learners?(2)What collocation information is included in the current Chinese-English dictionaries?(3)How is collocation information treated in the existing Chinese-English dictionaries?(4)What criteria should we set for the representation of collocations in examples of Chinese-English dictionaries for Chinese EFL learners?The present study is based on the Lexical Priming Theory by Michael Hoey.Priming means the collocational,colligational and semantic choices that are accumulated and shaped in the individual mind through repeated encounters.At the very center of this theory,collocation is thought to be a pervasive phenomenon in a language which plays a key role in the naturalness of utterance.Every word is primed with other words,with particular semantic sets,and in certain grammatical position.The theory redefines collocation from a psychological perspective and lays stress on the importance of cor:pus evidence at the same time.The present study investigates the merits and demerits of the collocation representation in examples of existing five Chinese-English dictionaries:The Chinese-English Dictionary,3rd ed.(2010);The Chinese-English Dictionary(Unabridged)(2015);A Chinese-English Dictionary,3rd ed.(2010);New Age Chinese-English Dictionary,2nd ed.(2014);A New Century Chinese-English Dictionary,2nd ed.(2016).The examples of a common noun jieguo in these five Chinese-English dictionaries is extracted,analyzed and checked against linguistic data gathered from two Chinese collocation dictionarnes:The Content Words Collocation Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese(1992)and The Modern Chinese Collocation Dictionary(1999),the BNC and the British Big Five in respect to collocation and colligation primings.Special attention is given to the priming discrepancy between L1 and L2.The present study finds that collocations are underrepresented in these five C-E dictionaries.The collocation representation in existing C-E dictionaries have the following disadvantages:(1)The priming features of the headword is insufficiently instructed,with the Subject + Predicates colligation completely overlooked;(2)The translation examples shed no light on the distinct priming features of the English equivalents;(3)Not much attention is given to the L1-L2 prinmimg discrepancy,while no explicit error warning is delivered against common collocation errors;(4)The unsystematically arranged examples make it harder to locate the collocation information.In light of the Lexical Priming Theory and user-friendliness in lexicography,the present writer has proposed three criteria for collocation representation,namely systematicness,specificness,and salience,along with practical lexicographic measures:(1)examples should be arranged systematically on the basis of the colligational primings of the headword(2)examples should give specific hints about the distinctive semantic associations of the English equivalents to assist learners in selecting the appropriate English equivalent in L2 production;(3)examples should highlight the distinction between L1&L2 primings,explicit error warning is required when necessary;(4)the lexico-grammatical patterns should be make prominent by typographic design in order to achieve salience in microstructure.Based on the findings of the present study,an improvement on the collocation representation in exemplification of jieguoin a Chinese-English dictionary for Chinese EFL learners will be presented.The findings of present research have implications for the optimization of the Chinese-English dictionaries for Chinese EFL learners in productive use.