9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries

The microstructure of the dictionary specifies the way the lemma articles are composed. The lemma article starts with the headword, which is followed by its orthographical, phonological, morphological, syntactical, pragmatic and most important of all, semantic descriptions.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries It usually ends with information about word origin, which is found in some bilingual dictionaries, especially in unabridged bilingual dictionaries. 9.1 Lemmata structure

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries The headword is followed by its spelling, pronunciation, which is usually transcribed according to the International Phonetic System. Then the word class of the headword: In English bilingual dictionaries, nine major parts of speech are distinguished: n. v. adj. adv. conj. pron. prep. determiner, interjection Next is the inflectional form (if the headword happens to be an irregular noun, verb, adjective or adverb). Next, the definition and illustrative sentences (grammar, register, usage, etc)

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries The lemma article may end with information about the etymology( 语源 ) of the headword. Only unabridged and highly scholarly bilingual dictionaries are likely to have etymological information attached. headword → pronunciation →part of speech → inflections → grammatical, register and other codes → definitions → illustrations →word origin

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries 9.2 Definition structure Sense ordering applies only to words with two or more than two meaning (polysemy) as monosemous words have a single meaning and therefore have only one definition in the lemma article. The ordering of senses in lemma articles is one of the most significant decisions lexicographers have to make, because the role such decisions play in dictionary use can never be underestimated.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries Kipfer (1984:101) distinguishes three different ways of ordering definitions: 1) by usage or frequency, 2) by clustering the various definitions around several core or basic uses, such as the original use and major metaphorical uses, and 3) in chronological or historical order. The second one is somewhat vague and difficult to follow.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries In actual process of dictionary making, this principle may roughly be divided into two subcategories: logical ordering analytical ordering There are four basic principles governing the ordering of meanings in the lemma article: empirical ( 根据经验的 ) analytical logical historical.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries In actual lexicographical practice, the logical ordering depends so much on the knowledge lexicographers have and the judgments they make rather than on a scientific foundation, so that it is highly subjective and “should not be accepted in these scientific times”. The analytical principle clusters various definitions around several core or basic uses so that senses are “ordered analytically, according to central meaning clusters from which related subsenses and additional separate senses may evolve”.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries In the case of bilingual dictionaries, the empirical principle based on usage and frequency count should always be preferred, because current senses and usage of words are the dominant concerns of dictionary users. 9.3 Structural organization of examples Examples showing the lemma behavior in the context of its actual use demonstrating its morphological, syntactical, collocational, connotational, stylistic and sociocultural features.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries In bilingual dictionaries two basic principles of example arrangement are followed: meaning-centered usage-centered In term of the meaning-centered principle, examples are arranged according to the meaning of the lemma they illustrate. If the dictionary size is strictly restricted, examples should be provided to illustrate at least the most essential senses and usages.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries The usage-centered principle arranges examples on the basis of how the lemma functions syntactically and morphologically in combination with other lexical units. Which principle should be adopted in bilingual dictionaries depends again on the dictionary purpose and its intended user. dictionaries for decoding purpose = the meaning-centered principle dictionaries for encoding purpose = the usage-centered principle

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries 9.4 Structural organization of variants The spelling variants are usually given immediately after the headword but separated from it by a comma. The variant which is given the initial position in microstructure is normally considered the socially accepted standard form preferred by most members of the speech community.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries The ordering of variants of the headword in the microstructure may also be determined by the dictionary contents. e,g. In an English-Chinese dictionary of American English, the American form should precede the British form. In a general English-Chinese dictionary, the British form should be listed first.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries In cases where differences in spelling are not due to regional factors, it is the frequency count that matters. The most frequently used form comes first. The frequency principle also applies to the arrangement of pronunciation variants, grammatical labeling, homographs( 同 形异义字 ), and so on in microstructure. e.g. When a verb is used both transitively and intransitively, the order of the codes (v. tr., v. intr.) indicates the relative frequency of the two uses.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries 9.5 Bidirectionality and reversibility Bidirectionality A bilingual dictionary is monodirectional if it consists of only one part in which the paradigmatic( 例证的 ) structure in the source language is followed by explanation in the target language. A bilingual dictionary is bidirectional if it consists of two parts, one of which runs from the source language to the target language and the other goes in the reverse direction.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries Bidirectionality is a common feature shared by most English bilingual dictionaries made in England and on the European Continent, but it is an extremely rare phenomenon in the history of Chinese bilingual lexicography. The first Chinese-English dictionary, Morrison’s A dictionary of the Chinese Language (Wu Chu Yun Fu, 1815 – 1823), was also the first bidirectional bilingual dictionary made with Chinese as the source language. 华英字典 / 马礼逊著

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries Reversibility Theoretically, reversibility does not seem to work with language dictionaries, as no two languages in the world, not even those sharing the same origin, have a one-to-one correspondence between lexical units and their meanings, to say nothing of their differences in cultural implication even if there happens to be such correspondence.

9. Microstructure of Bilingual Dictionaries Deviation is found in reverse(-order) dictionaries, which list word-entries “alphabetically by last-to-first rather than first-to- last letter order” or arrange word-entries according to the expressional aspect of the last character rather than the first character in the lexical combination, as in A reverse Dictionary of the Chinese Language (1989).