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On the Definition of Chinese Quadrasyllabic Idiomatic Expressions in Chinese-French Dictionaries: Problems and Corpus-Based Solution

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Chinese Lexical Semantics (CLSW 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11831))

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Abstract

To define Chinese quadrasyllabic idiomatic expressions in Chinese-French dictionaries is a demanding work for dictionary compilers. By comparing and analyzing the definition of quadrasyllabic idiomatic expressions in Chinese-French dictionaries, this study discussed 4 kinds of problems (wrong definition, inappropriate definition, omission of senses and absence of contextual information), and then gave some suggestions to improve the definition of these Chinese idioms by observing and analyzing their real use in large-scale corpus.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The researcher of this paper uses the terms “define” and “definition” instead of “translate” and “translation”, because for bilingual dictionaries, to well explain the meanings and the usages of an entry word, translational equivalents are not enough. Other methods of explanation used to define an entry word in monolingual dictionaries should also be used in the target language in bilingual dictionaries. The definition of Chinese quadrasyllabic idiomatic expressions refers to the explanation of all the possible meanings of each idioms as entry words.

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Funding Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Special Creative Project of Guangdong Universities (2017WTSCX026); project of Guangzhou social science (2019GZGJ65) and French subproject of CNCTST major project (ZD2019001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Lexicographical Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Baiyundadaobei 2, Guangzhou, 510420, China

    Fang Huang

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  1. Fang Huang
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Correspondence to Fang Huang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Jia-Fei Hong

  2. Beijing Information Science and Technology University, Beijing, China

    Yangsen Zhang

  3. Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China

    Pengyuan Liu

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Huang, F. (2020). On the Definition of Chinese Quadrasyllabic Idiomatic Expressions in Chinese-French Dictionaries: Problems and Corpus-Based Solution. In: Hong, JF., Zhang, Y., Liu, P. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11831. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38189-9_61

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38189-9_61

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-38188-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-38189-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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