On The Exemplification For Chinese-English Dictionaries For Chinese EFL Learners From The Perspective Of The Spreading-activation Theory

Chinese-English dictionaries for EFL learners(hereinafter C-E dictionaries)are bilingual dictionaries intended for Chinese native speakers.This kind of dictionaries mainly satisfies learners'productive needs.Illustrative examples help learners to improve lexical usage and discriminate synonymous equivalents,which provide important information for advanced learners when they conduct encoding activities.However,it is found that currently illustrative examples provided in C-E dictionaries are limited in quantity.Most headwords are only supplied with two or three most-commonly used contextual examples.Besides,as existing C-E dictionaries fail to provide necessary discrimination or use information,which makes users feel difficult to select from the alternatives.Under such circumstances,the user of a C-E dictionary can only select the equivalents after consulting the English-Chinese dictionary.This process is time-consuming and laborious and violates the "user-friendly" principle of lexicography.Two factors cause the above-mentioned problems:(a)The dictionaries currently on the market mostly are "one for all kinds of learners" type.When it comes to the specific need of the advanced learners,the lack of attention is quite overwhelming;(b)The lack of Chinese-English parallel corpora could be partly blamed.There are a few limited high-quality parallel corpora,but they are not available to the public.Therefore,it is necessary to design a C-E dictionary that meets the specific demand of advanced learners.By using parallel corpus evidence in an innovative way,we aim to upgrade the examples so that advanced learners may produce expressions that are more idiomatic and more expressive.The objective of this study is to explore the intensive and diversified use of corpus data in compiling C-E dictionaries for Chinese native speakers,with improved examples under the guidance of the Spreading-activation Theory.The Spreading-activation Theory proposed by Collins&Loftus(1975)postulates that nodes in the network correspond to concepts.Nodes are related to each other through certain paths.Once a node is activated,it spreads out along the path.Under the guidance of this theory,it is found that the context set by the example sentences is very important for long-term memory of words.The context both provides the typical co-text of the new word,and connects the new word with other words in the same context,which is crucial for the accurate use of the word.This study works on the construction of examples of verb entries.As a core vocabulary component of the language,verbs have great flexibility and particularity,which are the most frequently used lexical categories when users conduct encoding activities.The verb(character/character combination)entries under the G section in the New Age Chinese-English Dictionary(Second Edition)are taken for investigation.Thus,major steps include:(1)the combined use of monolingual and parallel corpora to improve the extraction of examples,and(2)more extensive use of learner corpora data and its integration into spreading-activation-based lexical environments to select examples that are more user-friendly.The monolingual one is a self-built one with two British learners'dictionaries Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionar and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English;the parallel corpus is the Chinese Open Wordnet(hereinafter COW).It is found that guided by the Spreading-activation Theory,the innovative use of corpus evidence makes the examples more user-friendly.In terms of extracting examples from corpora,the nodes activated by the headword spread to other synonyms of different focuses,degrees and content,thus the contexts are more diverse.In terms of selecting examples,the nodes activated by the entry spread to other nodes related to it,so that the constructed examples present the typical context of the headword and provide learners with usage information.Rich contextual and usage information is helpful for EFL learners in writing,translation and other encoding activities.The present research may benefit the treatment of verb entries in C-E dictionaries in the future.Although this study has limitations in the small number of selected verb subjects,and the limited focus on advanced learners,it is still of guidance on innovative practice and theoretical value in the field of bilingual learner lexicography.