Toward a Theory of a Chinese-English Learners Dictionary.doc

toward a theory of a chinese-english learners dictionary1. introductionmost chinese-english dictionaries are explicitly or implicitly designed for the chinese to learn english. it is understandable in an age when the chinese were opening their eyes to the west. however, in the last few decades when the offspring of overseas chinese looked back to their roots, and when the west showed its interest in china, the neglect of non-native chinese learners became evident.both yale universitys dictionary of spoken chinese (1966) and fred fangyu wangs mandarin chinese dictionary: chinese-english (1967) broke ground in acknowledging and accommodating the cfl (chinese as a foreign language) students needs. after three decades, however, lexicographical progress in this regard is not particularly impressive. john defrancis abc chinese-english dictionary (1996) adds a pleasant surprise to this long quiet market, but it mainly serves as a quick reference for advanced cfl students, without touching too much on some basic cfl issues. chinese-english dictionary汉英双解词典(1997), though claiming to serve adult cfl students, still leaves considerable room for improvement.the core of this paper addresses the features of an adequate chinese-english learners dictionary for non-chinese. it draws most of its theoretical underpinnings from linguistics, lexicography, and second language acquisition. in the following, i will argue that such a pedagogical dictionary should be able to represent the communicative competence of an ideal college-educated native speaker of mandarin chinese. this communicative competence, in turn, consists of grammatical, pragmatic, and cultural components. only when these three elements are incorporated and treated can such a dictionary be theoretically adequate.2. chinese as a foreign languageit is more than 30 years since chinese as a foreign language, or cfl for short, has emerged as a discipline in its own right, with the establishment of the chinese language teachers association and the publication of its journal. in response to this emerging discipline, many of its issues have been investigated, but research into the use of dictionaries in cfl has long been disregarded.3. chinese-english dictionaries: some general inadequaciescfl students need an adequate chinese-english dictionary. however, current dictionaries do not serve this population well, and the students still have to make do with inadequate tools.during the past 50 years, several chinese-english dictionaries were, or have been, popular among the non-native learners, such as mathews chinese-english dictionary麦氏汉英大辞典, a new practical chinese-english dictionary远东实用汉英辞典and its second edition far east chinese-english dictionary远东汉英大辞典, lin yutangs chinese-english dictionary of modern usage林语堂当代汉英词典and its second edition the new lin yutang chinese-english dictionary最新林语堂汉英词典, a chinese-english dictionary汉英词典and its revised edition, and the bidirectional concise english-chinese chinese-english dictionary精选英汉汉英词典. although claiming to serve both the chinese and non-chinese, these dictionaries are essentially geared to the chinese or advanced cfl students in translation. for the great majority of less-advanced cfl students, these dictionaries can only help them in decoding, by means of providing them with english equivalents, translations, or explanations. they do very little in helping cfl students write or speak in chinese. they are definitely inadequate for encoding, or language production.on the other hand, we do have some cfl-oriented dictionaries, although they are over 30 years old, such as the us war departments dictionary of spoken chinese (1945), concise dictionary of spoken chinese国语字典(1947) by yuen ren chao 赵元任 and lien sheng yang 杨联升, yale universitys dictionary of spoken chinese (1966), and fred fangyu wangs mandarin chinese dictionary: chinese-english (1967). these early dictionaries started to recognize the needs of the cfl students, and for the first time, language production was taken into serious consideration. however, without going into detail, these learner-oriented dictionaries are not sophisticated, and their treatment of chinese is primitive.thirty years after the publication of these pioneering cfl dictionaries, two new members joined the familyjohn defrancis abc chinese-english dictionary (1996) and chinese-english dictionary汉英双解词典(1997) by beijing language and culture university press北京语言文化大学出版社. however, it is surprising to know that after 30 years, the two latest cfl chinese-english dictionaries we expect so much are still far from adequate: the former looks more like an updated expansion of yales and fred wangs dictionaries to the size and scope of a chinese-english dictionary汉英词典, with much fewer example phrases and sentences; the latter looks like an updated enlargement of the second half of concise english-chinese chinese-english dictionary精选英汉汉英词典.4. learners dictionarya learners dictionary is a dictionary of any language or language pair, specifically designed to meet the needs of non-native learners in acquiring the target language. the first written use of the term learners dictionary is probably in the title of oxfords first such dictionary published in 1948. its fifth edition, oxford advanced learners dictionary (oald 5), came out in 1995. this year also saw the publication of three other major learners dictionaries; they are longman dictionary of contemporary english, third edition (ldoce 3), collins cobuild english dictionary, second edition (cobuild 2), and the brand new cambridge international dictionary of english (cide). these four represent the best that english, probably the world, has to offer in the lexicographical genre of learners dictionary.these four english learners dictionaries (elds) for non-native speakers share some common features that set them apart from general-purpose english dictionaries (geds) for native speakers. these features are characterized as: fewer entries, core english, synchrony, fuller treatment, ipa pronunciation, grammatical information, refined stylistic labels, simpler defining language, copious examples, idioms and phrasal verbs, usage notes, lexical associations, pictorial illustrations, and non-encyclopedic information. as one chinese saying goes, 他山之石可以攻玉 “stones from other hills may serve to polish the jade of this one.” these features of the elds are definitely of great reference value to us in the compilation of a chinese-english learners dictionary.5. requirements for an ideal chinese-english learners dictionarydrawing from saville-troike (1992), i adopt a broader interpretation of communicative competence, which includes grammatical competence, pragmatic competence, and cultural competence. echoing battenburg (1991), i take broader communicative competence of an ideal college-educated speaker of the target language to be the long-term goal for foreign language learning. in plain english, this broader communicative competence of grammatical, pragmatic, and cultural components is also what an ideal learners dictionary should simulate. grammatical competenceideal college-educated chinese speakers grammatical competence consists of their linguistic knowledge of the chinese lexicon, syntax, phonetics and phonology, morphology, and semantics. it follows that such linguistic knowledge should be properly represented in an adequate chinese-english learners dictionary. specifically, the lexical coverage of such a dictionary should be a proper lexicographical representation of their mental lexicon. in practice, what lexicographers can do in this regard is base the new dictionary on its predecessors, be it monolingual or bilingual, in the selection of entries. a team of college-educated chinese lexicographers will then cross-check the currency of these data, updating them to reflect their current grasp of the language.likewise, the dictionarys syntactic information should properly reflect the ideal native speakers understanding of the chinese syntactic rules and collocations. in an effort to formulate reliable syntactic rules and show representative collocations, it would be best if we could do thorough research on the mandarin grammar and then have it tailored for such a cfl dictionary. again, this syntactic information should be cross-checked by the team of college-educated chinese-speaking lexicographers, just to ensure that it properly reflects this part of their grammatical competence. in real applications, verb and adjective patterns should be listed and illustrated with examples; collocations, either grammatical or lexical, should be indicated; function words, such as prepositions and grammatical particles, should be treated in depth.furthermore, the dictionarys indication of the mandarin sounds should properly reflect the ideal native speakers pronunciation and their knowledge of the phonological rules. pinyin is very phonetic, and it has been widely accepted in cfl activities to show pronunciations, so there seems to be no immediate reason to switch to ipa. however, contrasting the mandarin consonants, vowels, and four tones with their english counterparts (if any) in a non-technical way will facilitate cfl students acquisition of the mandarin sound system. in addition, the indication of tone sandhithe most prominent among mandarin phonological changesis also crucial to the “correct” pronunciation.in the same way, the dictionarys treatment of chinese morphology should also reflect the ideal native speakers knowledge of chinese word formation. such a principle can be applied to the morphemic analysis of the chinese headwords. also, derivational morphology in chinese, represented by prefixes and suffixes, has largely been ignored in chinese lexicography. this undue disregard should be rectified by listing them as separate entries and by giving the rules and examples to demonstrate how this morphological knowledge works.lastly, the dictionarys presentation of meaning should be able to reflect the ideal native speakers grasp of lexical semantics. in bilingual lexicography, this is accomplished through the use of interlingual equivalents. the equivalents offered, if any, should be real equivalents. if they are only partial, other lexicographical devices have to be provided, so that the differences can be faithfully reflected. zgusta (1971) points out that if no equivalents exist, which is often the case with culture-bound words, explanations and/or other strategies must be adopted to guarantee learners semantic grasp of the lexical items in question.pragmatic competencethe pragmatic competence of ideal college-educated chinese speakers can be viewed as consisting of their knowledge of those aspects of meaning not derivable from pure syntactic and semantic parsing, or their understanding of those usages commonly found in communicative activities. when foreigners engage in the target-language communication with native speakers, they may first struggle with vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. but as their grammatical competence grows more sophisticated, they may start undergoing a totally different kind of language-learning setback, that is, pragmatic mistakes, without really knowing it. the ignorance of what illocutionary force a verb carries can create an unexpected perlocutionary effect on the listener or reader. for example, the use of “要”(to want) in certain low-to-high contexts can be a faux pas in chinese, because this verb connotes stronger authority and command, and its use is sometimes felt to be an attempt to challenge the authority, which the “good” chinese are not supposed to. a good learners dictionary has pragmatic obligations to address similar issues.also, for a language pair so different in their cultural traditions like chinese and english, the notion of one-to-one equivalence becomes less and less reliable at the discourse level, and the inclusion of pragmatic information becomes more and more important to language production in an adequate learners dictionary (mccreary 1986). for example, the chinese word “坐”(to sit) may be more than its literal meaning. in one discourse strategy, it can mean “to pay a visit,” and may be used to signify the speakers intention of ending the conversation, as in “来我们家坐坐嘛！”(come visit us!). in another discourse strategy, it can mean “to stay,” and is usually used at the point of leave-taking, as in “再坐会儿嘛！”(stay a little longer!). disregarding the role discourse plays in solving interlingual equivalence would lead us into a lexicographical cul-de-sac. leech and thomas(1987: f12-f13) argue for the importance of pragmatic information in a learners dictionary. they observe that the study of pragmatics has found its way in foreign language teaching, and the appropriate use of language is getting its due attention after the long lopsided emphasis on grammatical correctness. to illustrate their point, they give an insightful analogy of how important and crucial pragmatics can be in the learning of english, which is also applicable to the learning of other languages, including chinese:if foreigners make grammatical errors, people may think they do not speak english very well, and make allowances for them. but if learners make pragmatic errors, they risked . . . appearing impolite, unfriendly, or even aggressive. thus, to avoid such potentially more dangerous errors, a good learners dictionary should assume its pragmatic obligations and treat pragmatic information seriously in order to be fully adequate.those categories, such as deixis, conversational implicature, presupposition, speech acts, etc., can facilitate the clarification of the attributes of the meaning or usage concerned, so that we can understand it better and give it more adequate lexicographical treatment. cultural competenceculture is the totality of material and mental products of a particular people, which are socially, rather than biologically, transmitted. chinese, like english and other languages, contains some taken-for-granted background information constituting native speakers cultural literacy (hirsch 1987), which i call cultural competence. this cultural competence smooths the communication within any given speech community, hence enabling the speakers thereof to function better in that society. thus, to culturally competent native speakers of american english, fort knox is not just an ordinary place name. it is where the u.s. federal government stores gold bullion, and is therefore heavily guarded and impossible to break into. this term has thus come to be synonymous with either any place of impregnable security or of great wealth.to culturally co