Lexicografía chinaorigen, desarrollo y estructura del vocabulario chino

Resum

Conclusion 1. Research Significance This study has offered a fairly full panorama of Chinese vocabulary. Our hypothesis has been confirmed that the complexity of Chinese lexicon can be interpreted and sequentially accessed through surveying linguistic universal properties and its individual characteristics. To sum up, we have achieved chiefly three meaningful results as follows. Firstly, we have created a coherent theoretical framework for deliberating all over the important aspects of Chinese lexicon. The broad spectrum of topics includes Chinese lexicography, Chinese lexicological studies, the evolution of Chinese vocabulary and neologism, Mandarin morphology, Chinese interjection, onomatopoeia, reduplication and loanwords, Chinese lexical relations like polysemy, homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, etc., the conversions, consecutiveness, collocations, lexical solidarities, archaisms, jargons, honorific and humble words, curse words, taboo words and euphemisms, commendatory words, derogatory words, lexical formality scales and suchlike issues about register, and more. As far as we are concerned, this is the very first Spanish version of investigating Chinese lexicon in such a comprehensive way. Secondly, in approaching this research project we have made an innovative attempt at developing an integrative methodology that is principally comprised of typological orientation, cognitive analysis, cultural attribution, etc. Specifically, we have examined Chinese metaphorical word formation and semantic relations from the perspectives of the mental lexicon and cognitive linguistics. Besides, from an ethnolinguistic point of view, the study has focused on the cultural factors, encompassing material civilization, traditional ideologies and folklore, modern politics, social advocations, popular recreation, cross-cultural adaptation, etc., which have profound effects on propelling the semantic extension, the coinage of new terms, forming keywords and so forth. Moreover, we have also adopted a typological approach to Chinese vocabulary. By analyzing various instances in Chinese, English, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, etc., we have revealed abundant inherent individualities of Chinese lexical items, and meanwhile, many universal features as well. Additionally, in the course of our investigation, we have been constantly inspired by a lot of newly published articles and treatises, for example: • Chan, Sin-wai, et al., ed. (2016), The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language. London, New York: Routledge. • Fogel, Joshua A., ed. & trans. (2015), The Emergence of the Modern Sino-Japanese Lexicon: Seven Studies. Leiden, Boston: Brill. • Hsu, Chan-Chia (2015), A Syntagmatic Analysis of Antonym Co-occurrences in Chinese: Contrastive Constructions and Co-occurrence Sequences. Corpora 10 (1): 47-82. • Sun, Zhenbin (2015), Language, Discourse, and Praxis in Ancient China. Verlag, Berlin, and Heidelberg: Springer. • Wang, William S-Y & Sun, Chaofen, eds. (2015), The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. • Ma Wenyan; Helms-Park, Rena; Su Xiangli (马文艳, Rena Helms Park, 苏向丽 2014), Jīyú yǔliàokù de yīnghàn gāopín fùhécí yǔyì tòumíngdù yánjiū《基于语料库的英汉高频复合词语义透明度研究》(A Corpus-based Study on the Semantic Transparency of English and Chinese High Frequent Compounds), Journal of Xi’an International Studies University 《西安外国语大学学报》3: 10-13. • Su, Xinchun & He, Tingting, eds. (2014), Chinese Lexical Semantics. Cham: Springer. • Wei Xiangqing, et al. (魏向清等 2014), Zhōngguó císhū fāzhǎn zhuàngkuàng bàogào 1978-2008《中国辞书发展状况报告（1978-2008）》(A Report on the Development of Chinese Dictionaries: 1978-2008), Beijing 北京: The Commercial Press 商务印书馆. • Wu Haiyan (吴海燕 2014), Shāngwù hànyǔ cíhuì yánjiū《商务汉语词汇研究》(Research on Business Chinese Vocabulary), Beijing 北京: Chinese Book Company 中国书籍出版社. • Wu Shuqiong (吴淑琼 2014), Hànyǔ fǎnyìcí gòngxiàn gòushì de zhuǎnyù jiědú《汉语反义词共现构式的转喻解读》(An Interpretation of Chinese antonym co-occurrence constructions from the perspective of metonymy), Foreign Studies《外文研究》1: 15-20, 30, 104. • Xu Chao (许超 2014), ‘Jié (jié)’ de cíyì yǐnshēn yǔqí wénhuà yùnhán yánjiū《“節（节）”的词义引申与其文化蕴含研究》(The Semantic Extension of ‘Jie’ and Its Cultural Connotations), Master's Thesis, Nanjing Normal University 南京师范大学. • Xu Yanhua (许艳华 2014), Miànxiàng hànyǔ èryǔ jiàoxué de chángyòng fùhécí yǔyì tòumíngdù yánjiū《面向汉语二语教学的常用复合词语义透明度研究》(A Second-language teaching-oriented Study of Semantic Transparency of Common Compound Words in Chinese), Doctoral dissertation, Beijing Normal University 北京师范大学. • Yuan Yulin, Zhan Weidong, Shi Chunhong (袁毓林 詹卫东 施春宏 2014), Hànyǔ “cíkù — gòushì” hùdòng de yǔfǎ miáoxiě tǐxì jíqí jiàoxué yìngyòng《汉语“词库—构式”互动的语法描写体系及其教学应用》(On the Lexicon-Construction Interaction Model of Chinese Grammatical Description and its Application in TCSL), Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies《语言教学与研究》2: 17-25. Thirdly, with the intention of carrying extensive and practical significance for Chinese language learners and researchers, we have provided copious illustrative examples. We expect our profuse offering of exemplification can conduce to students’ comprehending, memorizing and eventually accessing to Chinese vocabulary, and as well as activating scholars’ more deeply and broadly academic arguments in the future. We have aimed at collecting a remarkable amount of lexical materials from ancient times to modernity, and the language data are mainly sourced from: • Xiàndài hànyǔ cídiǎn《现代汉语词典》(The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary), Editions of 2002, 2005 and 2012, Beijing 北京: The Commercial Press 商务印书馆; • Gǔdài hànyǔ cídiǎn《古代汉语词典》(Ancient Chinese Dictionary), Edition of 2002, Beijing 北京: The Commercial Press 商务印书馆; • Hàn yīng dà cídiǎn《汉英大词典》(The Chinese-English Dictionary), Third Edition of 2010, Shanghai 上海: Shanghai Translation Publishing House 上海译文出版社; • Oxford Chinese Dictionary, First Edition of 2010, Oxford: Oxford University Press, in association with Beijing 北京: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) 外语教学与研究出版社. The other important resources for lexical information gathering include the special-purpose reference books, the Chinese classics and their authoritative translated versions, a variety of foreign language dictionaries and so on, for instance: • Xiàndài hànyǔ pínlǜ cídiǎn《现代汉语频率词典》(Modern Chinese Frequency Dictionary), Beijing 北京: Beijing Language and Culture University Press 北京语言学院出版社, 1986; • Su Xinchun (苏新春), Xiàndài hànyǔ fēnlèi cídiǎn《现代汉语分类词典》(A Thesaurus of Modern Chinese), Beijing 北京: The Commercial Press 商务印书馆, 2013; • The Chinese Language Society of HK (香港中国语文学会), Jìnxiàndài hànyǔ xīncí cíyuán cídiǎn《近现代汉语新词词源词典》(An Etymological Dictionary of Modern Chinese Neologisms), Shanghai 上海: Publishing House of Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary 汉语大词典出版社, 2001; • Gao Mingkai, Liu Zhengtan, Mai Yongqian, Shi Youwei (高名凯 刘正埮 麦永乾 史有为), Hànyǔ wàiláicí cídiǎn《汉语外来词词典》(Dictionary of Loan Words and Hybrid Words in Chinese), Shanghai 上海: Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House 上海辞书出版社, 1984; • Zhang Gonggui, et al. (张拱贵等), Hànyǔ wěiwǎnyǔ cídiǎn《汉语委婉语词典》 (A Dictionary of Chinese Euphemisms), Beijing 北京: Beijing Language and Culture University Press 北京语言文化大学出版社, 1996; • Lu Fubo (卢福波), Duìwài hànyǔ chángyòng cíyǔ duìbǐ lìshì《对外汉语常用词语对比例释》(Comparative Illustration of Common Chinese Words and Expressions), Beijing 北京: Beijing Language and Culture University Press 北京语言大学出版社, 2000; • Zhu Jingsong (朱景松), Xiàndài hànyǔ fǎnyìcí cídiǎn《现代汉语反义词词典》(A Dictionary of Modern Chinese Antonyms), Beijing 北京: Language and Culture Press 语文出版社, 2014; • Mei Jiaju (梅家驹), Xiàndài hànyǔ dāpèi cídiǎn《现代汉语搭配词典》(A Dictionary of Modern Chinese Collocations), Shanghai 上海: Publishing House of Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary 汉语大词典出版社, 1999; • Zalta, Edward N., ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2014 Edition, World Wide Web URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/, Stanford: The Metaphysics Research Lab, 
Center for the Study of Language and Information, 
Stanford University; • Legge, James (1891), The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Taoism. Part II: the Writings of Kwang-ze, Books XVII-XXXIII; The Thai-Shang Tractate of Actions and Their Retributions, Appendixes I-VIII, Oxford: Clarendon Press, Reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt Ltd in 2007; • Legge, James (1893), Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean, Revised Second Edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, Reprinted by Cosimo in 2006; • Liddell, Henry & Scott, Robert (1843), A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Revised edition digitized by the Perseus Project in 2007; • New Oxford American Dictionary, Third Edition of 2010, Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la lengua española, 23.ª ed., Madrid: Espasa, 2014. 2. Findings and Inferences 2.1 Inheriting Academic Traditions by Overviewing Chinese Lexicography The subject matters covered in this work are fairly comprehensive and systematic. First of all, we have undertaken an overview of Chinese lexicography, which introspects on Chinese philological traditions. For three millennia, since the Zhou Dynasty (1046BC – 256BC), China has attached great importance to dictionaries. The compilation has come through the evolution from the lexicographer’s individual work to the national will on occasion. Particularly during the flourishing ages, the reigning monarchs used to order compiling large-scaled dictionaries to make a conspicuous show of their governing success and prosperous culture. A lot of works have realized great values, whether academic or practical, such as An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters (《说文解字》 Shuō wén jiě zì), Kangxi Dictionary (《康熙字典》 Kāngxī zìdiǎn), The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (《现代汉语词典》Xiàndài hànyǔ cídiǎn), etc. In brief, throughout the lexicographical history of Chinese language, the diversification is distinctive with Chinese characteristics: • Glossaries served as primers for teaching children to read, or as reference books for verifying the meanings, the origin, the pronunciation and the writing form of a Chinese character (also a word usually in classical Chinese); • Classified dictionaries (类书 lèishū) and rhyme-dictionaries (韵书 yùnshū) for scholars’ consulting or writers’ quoting; • Annotations and commentaries (注 zhù), sub-commentaries (疏 shū), supplements and reviews (笺 jiān), and suchlike textual criticism of dictionaries from the perspective of traditional Chinese linguistics, i.e. philology, historical phonology and exegetics, for interpreting ancient classics, etc. Although we cannot simply identify them equivalently to defining dictionary, prescriptive dictionary, learner's dictionary, etymological dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, etc., in the modern sense, they are undoubtedly the treasured integration of ancient Chinese knowledge and culture, apart from conserving the language. And with the lexicographical modernization, Chinese dictionaries have achieved great development withal, being rich in variety, especially the new types such as the multilingual dictionary, the visual dictionary, the online or electronic dictionaries, etc. They embody the important findings of modern linguistics with functional segmentation and targeting. The capsule review of those significant language dictionaries from antiquity to the present conduces to comprehending and learning from the conventional research methods and the specialized terminology for investigating Chinese characters and words. The traditional theories are critical to proceed to the actual investigations, as we have introduced: • The theory of 六书 (liùshū, six categories of Chinese characters), i.e. 指事 (zhǐshì, self-explanatory category), 象形 (xiàngxíng, pictographic category), 形声 (xíngshēng, semantic-phonetic category), 会意 (huìyì, ideographic category), 转注 (zhuǎnzhù, mutually explanatory category), and 假借 (jiǎjiè, the category of phonetic loans); • The principle of organizing Chinese character dictionaries by sections with shared components, i.e. 部首 (bùshǒu, radicals); • Both the research mode 右文 (yòuwén, right radical theory, to seek character’s meaning from the sound of its right-side radical) and the exegetical method 因声求义 (yīn shēng qiú yì, i.e. 声训 shēngxùn, phonetic interpretation, seeking word's meaning according to its pronunciation), making significant contributions to the study of etymology and cognate word; • The traditional phonetic notation, including 直音 (zhíyīn, direct phonetic notation) by means of using the labels of 某声 (mǒushēng, pronounced as), 读若 (dúruò, pronounced as, use a more familiar character bearing the same or similar pronunciation as the indicator), etc., and 反切 (fǎnqiè, indicate the pronunciation of a unfamiliar character by combining the two components: the initial consonant of the first known character, and the vowel of the second known character); • The differentiation of the four tones in ancient Chinese, i.e. 平 (píng, level), 上 (shǎng, falling-rising), 去 (qù, falling) and 入 (rù, entering); • The definition of 叠音 (diéyīn, reiterative) and 联绵词 (liánmiáncí, Lianmian-words), the latter comprising 双声 (shuāngshēng, alliterated words), 叠韵 (diéyùn, rhymed words), and 双声叠韵 (shuāngshēng diéyùn, concurrently alliterative-rhymed words); • The tradition of dividing words into 实 (shí, content) and 虚 (xū, function), and making use of exegetic terms, such as 辞 (cí, diction, function words), 语助 (yǔzhù, speech helper), 词 (cí, word, term), 发端 (fāduān, inception), 余声 (yúshēng, remaining sound), etc.; • The principle 五不翻 (wǔbùfān, Five No’s in Translation) for resolving the dilemma between 意译 (yìyì, calque, free translation) and 音译 (yīnyì, transcription) when introducing loanwords; • Norms establishing of ancient Chinese, such as 通语 (tōngyǔ, general language), 雅言 (yǎyán, standard language), etc. Therefore we can come to the conclusion that Chinese linguistic academia has a cultural heritage that maintained and nurtured by the lexicographers. They have paid close attention to Chinese characters rather than words, particularly to the evolution of their pronunciation, the glyphic forms and the semantic extension, which aroused the “Character-oriented Theory (字本位 zìběnwèi)” in recent years, as well as the corresponding second language pedagogy and textbooks. The principle inadequacies of Chinese traditional lexicography can be summarized as follows, although historically they also stand to reason: • A dearth of morphological study due to the absolute dominance of monosyllabic words in classical Chinese language, except for 叠音 (diéyīn, reiterative), 联绵词 (liánmiáncí, Lianmian-words), etc., which have been out of the phonetic consideration obviously though; • The focus of lexical meanings rather than the usages; • The exegetic motive for Chinese classics, instead of linguistic analysis per se; • The inclination of lexicographic coverage for Chinese literary vocabulary, far beyond the colloquial words; • The divorce between the modernistic lexicology and the tradition of Chinese lexicography, for example, labeling parts of speech learnt from the syntax of western languages, despite of the tremendous progress achieved by the updated Chinese dictionaries. 2.2 Concerning the Major Aspects of Chinese Lexicon We have touched upon almost all the major aspects of Chinese Lexicon, laying stress on the synchronic analysis of contemporary Chinese vocabulary, meanwhile involving diachronic probes into etymology, lexical evolution, neologism, etc. Through the comprehensive survey on Chinese lexicon, we arrive at two main conclusions. The first is that although Chinese vocabulary seems anomalous on the surface, in fact it shares plenty of universal properties with many other languages, broadly encompassing: • Chinese morphology has its very universal aspect. The forming mechanism of Chinese complex words is common with both affixation and compounding, the same as many western languages, although the latter assumes overwhelming superiority. In addition, abbreviation is commonplace as well in Chinese polysyllables. • Chinese compounds are congruent with the universal human cognition. A lot of illustrative word examples have verified that metaphors widely involve in compounding in Chinese. Especially the words compounded of human body terms are consistent with the cognitive theory of embodiment. • Chinese lexicon has another universal linguistic feature that phonaesthetic factors motivate word formation. Interjection, onomatopoeia, word-borrowing, reduplication, etc. are also vigorous in Chinese vocabulary. • Chinese lexicon is also semantically related to each other, as that of other languages. Various types of semantic relations in Chinese lexicon, such as synonymy, antonymy, etc. have great comparability on their internal mechanisms. The second conclusion we draw from the contrastive analysis is that the complexity of Chinese lexicon manifests itself in the individualities, for example: • During the long-term lexical evolution of Chinese language, especially in the course of disyllablization, it has determined an intricate relation among word (词 cí), morpheme (语素 yǔsù) and character (字 zì), which is quite different from western languages and impacts on Chinese morphology, prosodic features, collocations, semantic relations, and even syntax. • As China is widely acknowledged as an autonomous civilization, Chinese lexis is rather self-contained. Compared with western languages, which imported a tremendous amount of words of Greek or Latin origin, Chinese retains its native mode to a very large extent. This causes the peculiar visage of Chinese lexis, unlike the historical relatedness between the vocabularies of western languages. For instance, the power of indigenization has led to the beyond recognition of Chinese loanwords adopted from Buddhism, and even has generated almost native-monosyllable-like root morphemes. • The compounds, being in the majority of modern Chinese vocabulary, also reflect its diversity and specificity. Some compounding types, such as the coordinative compounds with partial meaning (偏义复词 piānyìfùcí), the separable verbs (离合词 líhécí), the verb-complement compounds, the noun-classifier compounds, the serial verb compounds and the pivotal compounds, are very characteristic of Chinese. • Although Chinese vocabulary is considered semantically transparent in general, there is still opaqueness in lexical meaning access, which exactly represents the complexity of Chinese word structure, for example, the vague senses of some prefixes, the attenuated morpheme meanings, the circuitousness of polysemous extension, the interference of Chinese characters in polysyllabic simplex words, the obscure cyber neologisms transliterated with dialectal accent or erratically abbreviated, etc. • Modern Chinese has neither conjugation nor declension. Consequently, the conversion of parts of speech appears quite flexible for Chinese vocabulary, which is very distinct from inflectional and agglutinative languages. • Cultural factors are immensely influential in Chinese semantic extension, semantic relations like hyponymy, meronymy, etc., collocations, registers and so on. 3. Suggestions for Further Work This investigation is dedicated to give a comprehensive insight into Chinese lexicon, and it also suggests a lot of open questions for further work. The foremost issue in our mind is that our survey contains a wide range of subject matters, so it is deservedly inconsistent with the exploratory profundity to a certain extent. Although we have exerted ourselves to the utmost to cite relevant references, some topics we have touched upon are not well elucidated and entail future researchers endeavoring in depth. For instance, we have discussed the issue of reduplication and the word-formation associated with modern Chinese onomatopoeia, however they could be also compared with the ideophones of some indigenous languages in Africa, Australia, Finland, etc., to expand a view of typology. For another example, we have talked about Chinese general-purpose verbs (泛义动词 fànyì dòngcí), that show a great deal of collocative variety. A case study on the verb 打 (dǎ, beat) has been presented, which is engaged in collocations in a 3-hierarchy mode: “recurrent word combinations”, “arbitrary collocations” and “idiomatic collocations”. However this is not a Chinese distinctiveness, but very universal in many languages, such as English, German, Yiddish, Hindi, Japanese, etc. In terms of collocation, they are also equivalent to “delexical verb combinations”, which deserves to be further investigated, especially restricted on it whether requiring the light verb or not, to be identical with a synonymous simple verb in Chinese. Another noteworthy issue is about the pedagogic materialization of our assumed linguistic theories. One of the most important motivations of our research is serving the needs of Chinese learning and teaching as a second language. Certainly we have performed a full-scale introduction on Chinese lexicon, and explained with plenty of instructive word examples, that are counted on for facilitating the learners’ uptake and usage of Chinese words. We could use these existing results as the base for the further specific study of operability in the sphere of teaching. For example, we have applied the Conceptual Metaphor Theory to observing the metaphorical word-formation of Chinese vocabulary within the scope of the word cluster consisted of human body parts. What we could do next is to make a contrastive study on the mappings of different languages, placing variables and gaps alongside each other, in order to identify language errors, design targeted exercises, etc., for the learner-centered Chinese language teaching. Abstract 1. Introduction Nowadays, the enthusiasm in learning Mandarin is increasing globally, which is especially facilitated by the establishment of Confucius Institute. Nearly a decade of my experience in teaching Chinese as a second language inspired the consideration of engaging in this doctoral dissertation. During the course of giving a wide range of Chinese language classes to international students, I became acutely aware that language learning might last a lifetime, particularly due to the need of improving vocabulary, in the sense of both its size and the proficiency. Among the three core elements of a language, lexicon is certainly the most active compared with phonology and syntax. The tones and tone sandhi, etc. are generally recognized as the difficulties in learning Chinese pronunciation, however after all the phonetics is a close system, and moreover the learners normally devote themselves to the pronunciation only in the very initial phase of learning, and afterwards commonly have their phonetic errors fossilized. And compared with English, Spanish and suchlike inflectional Western languages, or even the agglutinative languages like Japanese, Korean, etc., Modern Standard Mandarin, as a very isolating language, having almost no inflections. For Chinese, function word and word order are the two main grammatical devices. The former is also a close system. Analogous to Modern English, the economization of syntactic categories in Modern Chinese is conducive to the language learning, especially for beginners or intermediate-level studies. More and more scholars have recognized that the model of “a large-sized vocabulary and a small number of syntactic constructions” adapts to Chinese grammatical description (Yuan Yulin, Zhan Weidong and Shi Chunhong 2014). Contrastively, the complexity and diversity of Chinese vocabulary is probably the chief cause that so many Chinese language learners have to make sustained efforts on approaching to a more advanced level. The lexical abundance from the long history of China can be the primary problem. Although the quantitative studies induce Chinese language learners to follow a measurably expedient strategy on expanding their vocabulary, getting possessed of the glossary word-by-word is still quite challenging. Besides, the idiosyncrasies of Chinese lexicon also impact on the bilingual lexical access. For example, plenty of words of English or Spanish are formed from affixation, while Mandarin Chinese has a great lot of compound words, just as German language does. This analytic reasoning seems that the meaning of a compound word can be inferred from that of its constituent morphemes. However, in fact sometimes the semantic transparency of Modern Chinese vocabulary is fairly perplexing and the opaqueness certainly affects the recognition of compound words in second language learning. Thus from a typological perspective, the explicit rationale for the arduousness of developing Chinese lexical competence can be expounded. Lexicon makes the most direct connection between the real world and the language, no matter of ontology or metaphysics. Words not only have access to all aspects of daily life, but also express literature, arts, history, politics, philosophy, religions, natural science and so on. The variety of society and culture is a fundamental cause of lexical characteristics. China is widely acknowledged as one of the three autonomous civilizations. (The other two are Greece and India.) Although Chinese is also accessible to foreign cultures, the self-contained Chinese lexis differs from those of Western languages to a very large extent. Many words used in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and other modern European languages come from the same origin of Greek or Latin. However, being of a remote language in both distance and relations, Chinese lexicon conveys great amount of cultural-specific information and embodies social life. With the galloping development of Chinese society, the lexis is confronted with the new circumstance of globalization. The language contact is increasing in intensity; the need for the second language learning has grown several times over; the international outlook on lexicon and lexicology is starved for broadening. Compared to grammatical or phonetic study, that of Chinese vocabulary is still relatively insufficient and nonsystematic. Particularly there is a lack of cross-lingual perspectives in the existing research, thus resulting in a dearth of self-awareness. 2. Hypothesis and Research Methodology For serving the needs of Chinese teaching and learning as a second language, this doctoral study proposes a hypothesis that the complexity of Chinese lexicon can be interpreted and sequentially accessed through surveying linguistic universal properties and its individual characteristics. We attempt to support the hypothesis with convincing arguments grounded on massive and representative examples. The testifying process is limited in scope to Chinese vocabulary, namely, lexical sources, word formation, lexical semantics, etc. Precisely because the survey covers such a broad spectrum of topics, all the exemplified cases have been carefully selected. We intend to demonstrate an overall lexical profile of Chinese language through a comprehensive review on the relevant studies from antiquity to the present, and in the meanwhile provide an ample yet concrete instantiation for the masses of Chinese language learners. The research is both historical and contemporary in orientation. The study of modern Chinese lexicon involves looking at its origins, while the general review of Chinese lexicography, the language dictionaries in particular, supplies up-to-date investigations with the literature on lexical studies, the introspective concerns of philological traditions, the data collection of Chinese archaic words, and many other references. The dictionary-review allows us to prudently learn from the conventional tactics of Chinese academia, and further extend to analyzing different spheres of the status quo of present-day Chinese vocabulary. Thus from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, we describe and account for the observed changes in the complex and long evolvement that Chinese lexis went through, as well as carry out a comprehensive survey on its variation of current time, not only in its own entirety, but also in language comparison for discerning its specific phenomena. We take a broad view of academic theories on the lexicological study. Regarding the morphological analysis, we use principally the following works for reference: • Pan Wenguo, Yip Po-Ching, Han Yang (潘文国 叶步青 韩洋 1993), Hànyǔ de gòucífǎ yánjiū《汉语的构词法研究》, Taibei 台北：Sudent Book 学生书局. Edition of 2004, Shanghai 上海: East China Normal University Press 华东师范大学出版社. • Packard, Jerome L. (2000), The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. • Yip Po-Ching (2000), The Chinese Lexicon: A Comprehensive Survey. London, New York: Routledge. • Bauer, Laurie (2003), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. 2nd Revised Edition, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. • Dong Xiufang (董秀芳 2004), Hànyǔ de cíkù yǔ cífǎ《汉语的词库与词法》(Chinese Lexicon and Morphology), Beijing 北京: Peking University Press 北京大学出版社. And with respect to our argument on lexical semantics, the illuminating investigations include: • Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark (1980), Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • Cruse, Alan (1986), Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Mel'čuk, Igor (1996), Lexical Functions: A Tool for the Description of Lexical Relations in a Lexicon. In: Wanner, Leo (ed.), Lexical Functions in Lexicography and Natural Language Processing, pp. 37-102. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing Company. • Zhang Zhiyi (张志毅 2001), Cíhuì yǔyì xué《词汇语义学》(Lexical Semantics), Beijing 北京: The Commercial Press 商务印书馆. • Geeraerts, Dirk (2010), Theories of Lexical Semantics. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. • Su, Xinchun & He, Tingting, eds. (2014), Chinese Lexical Semantics. Cham: Springer. Thus based on these outstanding works and articles, we apply diversified theories and approaches respectively to the relevant issues of Chinese lexicon, that comprising, the morphological typology, the lexicogesis, the conceptual metaphor, the embodiment, the meaning-text theory, the cultural conceptualization and so on. The main three research methods are adopted as follows. 2.1 Linguistic Typology: Contrastive Analysis To support our hypothesis, we adopt the approach of linguistic typology, which aims to depict and explain the unity and the diversity of languages of the world. Although most of the investigations are about the crosslinguistic examination of various phonologic, syntactic or semantic topics, and there have been very few studies conducted on lexis, other than those about color terms and numerals, we believe that the contrastive analysis can be effectually applied to compare Chinese lexis to that of other languages. To a great extent, Chinese morphology resembles its syntax, that is to say, Chinese word formation is also restricted by the corresponding syntax, especially for the compounding, and thus Chinese morphosyntax is a key point to penetrate Chinese lexis. Packard (2000, pp. 39, passim) proposed the “Headedness Principle” of morphological patterns in Chinese disyllabic words, which is a valuable reference to attest the universal and the individual features in Chinese Lexicon. We employ the method of contrastive analysis not only to investigate Chinese morphology, but also to observe a wide range of lexical aspects, especially to the semantic relations of Chinese vocabulary. On issues as varied as polysemy, synonymy, antonym, hyponymy, meronymy, conversion, collocation, etc., with the comparative versions, we rediscover more typical examples and verify the availability and the accessibility of Chinese lexis. 2.2 Cognitive Approach: Conceptual Metaphor and Embodiment With the purpose of understanding the unity and divergence of lexical structure between Chinese and other human languages, we attempt a functional explanation, more precisely, the cognitive constraints. Cognitive linguistics interprets language in terms of the concepts, that is, the knowledge of linguistic phenomena is considered essentially conceptual in nature, and human employs similar cognitive abilities in using language, to those in managing other non-linguistic tasks. Thus cognitive approach has enormous explanatory power for the universals, particularly those closely associated with semantics. And thence we conduct an extensive examination on the metaphors building words with the terms of human body part in Chinese. The semantic-category-specific testimony based on human cognition supports our hypothesis that the lexical complexity of Chinese can be digested, despite its seemingly unbridgeable cultural abyss. 2.3 Ethnolinguistics: Cultural Factors In order to surmount the obstacle to comprehending Chinese vocabulary, we also make attempts to explain its inherent particularity, which is a requisite for constituting the lexical complexity, from an ethnolinguistic perspective. Different ethnic groups perceive the world in their alternative way. Through exploring the relationship between language and cultural conceptualization, we can decode the various features of human languages. We adopt the approach of ethnolinguistics to examine the cultural factors in Chinese lexicon, and further measure the range and variety of lexical dissimilarity, which is deeply entrenched in the cultural cognition of communities of language users. The practical operating procedures are applied integrating with the typological comparison and the cognitive interpretation mentioned above, especially for introducing the evolution of Chinese lexis and lexicography, the semantic extension of Chinese polysemy, and the register variables of Chinese vocabulary, etc. 3. Research Framework To serve our research purpose of conducing to Chinese learning as a second language and clarifying its lexical complexity, we make a quite comprehensive study of Chinese lexicon, despite a paucity of probe depth in some detailed cases. Besides Chapter I. Introduction and Chapter VIII. Conclusion, the dissertation mainly consists of the other six chapters: Chapter II. Chinese Lexicography Throughout the long history of Chinese language, the lexical fertility is wondrous thanks to the brilliant and autonomous Chinese civilization. The profusion and the intricacy of Chinese Lexicon challenge the language learning, whether of native speakers or foreigners. The traditional Chinese linguistics, that is, the philology (文字学 wénzìxué, the study of Chinese characters), the historical phonology (音韵学 yīnyúnxué, the study of Chinese sounds and rhymes) and the exegetics (训诂学 xùngǔxué, critical interpretation of ancient texts, especially focus on the explanations of words in ancient books), has been developed thoroughly for the past two millennia. And furthermore, the dictionary-compilation can even be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty (1046BC-256BC). The glossaries, the character-books, the rhyme-dictionaries and such like diversiform lexicographical works are not only the primers for teaching children to read, or the instruments for scholarly reference, but also very precious as the research literature of traditional Chinese linguistics. However the study of Chinese lexicography, which is still quite inadequate to the great mass of compiled achievements, can actually be a conjunctional approach from reviewing the evolution of Chinese dictionaries to the traditional Chinese lexical studies, and even further to the modern Chinese lexicology, furnishing us with the chronological background and the investigative conventions. Thus in this chapter, we briefly review the history of Chinese lexicography and analyzing the language dictionaries in both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, so that we outline the configuration of Chinese traditional linguistic studies, especially associated with the learning of Chinese lexicon. We make a retrospective survey presenting the main contents as follows: • Overviewing segmentally the historical advances of Chinese society and culture, especially the ideological evolvements, the scientific and technological innovation, and the academic progress; • Summarizing the relevant studies of Chinese lexicography, and combing literature materials; • Focus-introducing the luminaries and their significant lexicographic works, such as The Ready Guide (《尔雅》Ěr yǎ), The Dictionary of Dialectal Words (《方言》Fāngyán), An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters (《说文解字》Shuō wén jiě zì), The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms (《释名》Shì míng), The Jade Chapters (《玉篇》Yù piān) and the Chinese Character Dictionaries of the Period, The Dictionary of Rhymes (《广韵》Guǎng yùn), Kangxi Dictionary (《康熙字典》Kāngxī zìdiǎn), The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (《现代汉语词典》Xiàndài hànyǔ cídiǎn) and so on; • Interpreting the linguistic terms adopted by the classical academic community, and arguing about the crucial theories of lexicology. Chapter III. Mandarin Morphology In this chapter, first we review the development course of Chinese lexicology and summarize the most important research findings, and then based on the existing studies about the history of Chinese language, Chinese lexis, and Chinese lexicography, we briefly overview the evolution of Chinese vocabulary, encompassing the continuous creation of new words, the incessant enrichment of semantic categories, the explosive adoption of loanwords, the gradual improvement of word formation, and the tendency of the increasing disyllabic words, etc. Secondly, through comparing with the Indo-European languages, we argue about the semantic-syntactic criteria to identify a Chinese word (词 cí), and furthermore discuss the involute relations among morpheme (语素 yǔsù), word, phrase (词组 cízǔ), and character (字 zì) in Modern Chinese. In the third section, we come to the point of Chinese word structure, mainly focused on the Mandarin morphology. Pan Wen-guo, Yip Po-Ching, and Han Yang (潘文国、叶步青、韩洋 1993), Packard (1998, 2000, 2015), Yip Po-Ching (叶步青 2000), Dong Xiufang (董秀芳 2004), et al., have gained valuable access and tremendous insights into the subject, therefore we lay out the integral word structure of Mandarin Chinese with comprehensive reference to the relevant investigations as above, which comprises simplex words and complex words in short. Moreover we emphasize our quite distinctive points of view on several issues: • About affixation, we draw attention to the reiterative suffixes, the infrequent infixes, the quasi-affixes in grammaticalization process, and so on; • We stress the particularities of Chinese compound words, exemplifying with the separable verbs (离合词 líhécí), verb-complement compounds, noun-classifier compounds, serial verb compounds, pivotal compounds, etc; • We also briefly analyze that the formation type of the complex word bases on the morpheme meanings and the interactive effect between the components. Therefore some words are rather difficult to be assigned to a certain sort. Chapter IV. Phonetic Strategies of the Chinese Lexicon This forth chapter deals with the phonetic motivation of Chinese lexicon, which is mainly involved in the four aspects: interjection, onomatopoeia, loanwords and reduplication. We highlight the issue of Chinese borrowed words, because the borrowing process is principally on account of phonetic transcription. Based on reviewing the relevant studies and introducing the three key approaches to the loan translation in Chinese lexicon, we trace the origins of Chinese loanwords chiefly to Central Asian Languages, Buddhism and Western Christian Civilization, European Languages via modern Japanese, and Modern Russian especially in the Soviet times. A noticeable new trend is that the loan neologisms grow on a massive scale currently. Thereafter a wealth of examples is given in different semantic categories and furthermore the forming micromechanisms in those samples of lexical borrowing are analyzed. At last we discuss the problem of loanword variants and the standardization. Chapter V. Cognitive Approach to the Chinese Lexicon Scholars have been inspecting language from the cognitive perspective since the 1970s. They believe language structure is motivated by human conceptual knowledge, bodily experience and the communicative functions of discourse. In this chapter we attempt to explore Chinese vocabulary with the approach of cognitive linguistics. It is conceivable that we can ascertain the lexical similarities and diversities between Chinese and other languages, which are caused by human cognition. We briefly review the important Conceptual Metaphor Theory, especially the key ideas such as CATEGORIZATION, PROTOTYPE, IMAGE SCHEMA, MAPPING, etc. Then we apply the theory to observing the metaphors in the word formation of Chinese vocabulary. We concentrate on the word cluster consists of human body parts, including: • Head and neck, i.e. 头 (tóu, head), 首 (shǒu, head), 脖 (bó, neck), 颈 (jǐng, neck), 项 (xiàng, nape of the neck), 脑 (nǎo, brain, mind), 顶 (dǐng, calvaria, vertex), 面 (miàn, face), 脸 (liǎn, cheek, face), 颜 (yán, forehead, face), 额 (é, forehead) • Sense organs and other facial features, i.e. 目 (mù, eye), 眼 (yǎn, eye), 鼻 (bí, nose), 耳 (ěr, ear), 嘴 (zuǐ, mouth), 口 (kǒu, mouth), 舌 (shé, tongue), 眉 (méi, eyebrow), 牙 (yá, tooth), 齿 (chǐ, tooth), 咽 (yān, pharynx), 喉 (hóu, larynx) • Torso and limbs, i.e. 身 (shēn, body), 体 (tǐ, body), 胸 (xiōng, chest), 乳 (rǔ, breast), 腹 (fù, abdomen), 肚 (dù, belly), 腰 (yāo, waist), 脐 (qí, navel), 背 (bèi, back), 肢 (zhī, limb), 肩 (jiān, shoulder), 膀 (bǎng, shoulder; upper arm; arm), 臂 (bì, arm), 臀 (tún, buttocks), 股 (gǔ, thigh), 腿 (tuǐ, leg), 胫 (jìng, shin), 肘 (zhǒu, elbow), 膝 (xī, knee), 手 (shǒu, hand), 掌 (zhǎng, palm, pad), 脚 (jiǎo, foot), 足 (zú, foot, leg), 腕 (wàn, wrist), 踝 (huái, ankle), 指 (zhǐ, finger), 趾 (zhǐ, toe, foot) • Skin, muscle, flesh, bones and blood, i.e. 肉 (ròu, flesh), 肌 (jī, muscle), 脂 (zhī, grease, fat), 肤 (fū, skin), 皮 (pí, skin), 骨 (gǔ, bone), 血 (xuè, blood) • Internal organs, i.e. 心 (xīn, heart), 肺 (fèi, lung), 肝 (gān, liver), 肠 (cháng, intestines), 胃 (wèi, stomach), 脾 (pí, spleen), 胆 (dǎn, gallbladder) Restricted to this certain semantic field, we conduct a comprehensive survey on the metaphorical lexicalization of Chinese language. Cognitive scientists espouse that, to a great extent human beings have cognizance of the world through their own soma. The embodiment of mind is one of the three major types of results involved in the phenomenon of complex metaphor. (Lakoff & Johnson 1999, the other two types of results involved in the complex metaphor are “the cognitive unconscious” and “metaphorical thought”.) Human categorization is based, in part, on the nature of human bodies, and consequently the metaphors about human body and senses are also prevalent in the Chinese vocabulary, which expose the linguistic universal and Chinese cultural particularities. Chapter VI. The Semantic Relations of Chinese Vocabulary Semantic relations denote the multi-dimensional links among lexical items. Words seem to be very well organized in humans’ mind according to the theory of mental lexicon. In this chapter, we take an overarching view of Chinese polysemy, conversion, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, and consecutiveness, which respectively demonstrate the relationship amongst the demarcated senses of a word, or the semantic shifts within an invariant-formed word caused by altering parts of speech, or the paradigmatic relations among different terms. And moreover, although syntagmatic relations are normally discussed at the grammatical level, they also reveal semantic restrictions between words, such as collocation, lexical solidarities, etc., which are also involved in this subject therefore. First, the issue of polysemy is focalized around the cultural factors in the semantic extension of Chinese keywords. Traditional culture and modern civilization both have profound effects on developing Chinese polysemous words, which we have exemplified with many examples. They reveal abundant inherent distinctive characteristics, but nevertheless, from a typological perspective, we can also apprehend their universal aspect in the semantic extension mechanism that can be found in many other languages. Chinese has very few grammatical inflections and Lexical affixes, so as a consequence it seems more difficult to precisely assign the labels of part of speech for each Chinese word. Furthermore, word-class shift (词类活用 cílèi huóyòng) is very common in ancient Chinese and the flexible use of word based on semantic meaning is one of its most important grammatical characteristics. Due to this tradition, Chinese vocabulary has developed various categories of conversion. In respect of Modern Chinese Language, the term 兼类 (jiānlèi, multifunctional class) is more often used than “conversion” with explicit consideration of the uncertainty of converting source. Nevertheless, in this second section, for the sake of compatibility of times, we do not discriminate between the “conversion” and the “multifunctional class” to discuss the main converted cases at the semantic level as follows: • Nominal-verbal multifunction, both of the denominal verbs and the deverbal nouns included; • Adjectival-involved multifunction, comprising the adjectival-nominal class and the adjectival-verbal sort; • Others, including the polysemous yet syntactically multifunctional words, and plenty of content words, i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives, converting into function words through grammaticalization. In the third section, we trace the sources of Chinese synonyms, and quest for diversified ways to the synonymic discrimination, with a lot of specific examples. We have also talked over the effects of synonymy, and its meaning of existence. Besides the literary significance and being a type of cohesive device in continuous text, Chinese synonymy has a unique morphological value to form coordinative compounds or idioms. The fourth section is about Chinese antonymy. First we review the long-standing linguistic argument about the definition of antonymy, and the consequent disagreement regarding the categorization. Then we roughly differentiate Chinese antonymy into the non-gradable and gradable types, even though the relational opposites also get our consideration. Additionally, the antonymous counterparts that are formed by negative prefixes, especially the high-lexicalized terms, are also in a concern. Then we divert to the so-called converse word (反义复合词 fǎnyì fùhécí), that is, the coordinative compounds formed of antonymous pairs, and the asymmetry of binary opposites. In the fifth section about Chinese hyponymy, the focus issue is the inherent gaps and asymmetries in lexicon. Chinese words, especially nouns, are abundant in hypernyms, but to some extent lack of hyponyms, due to the munificence of compounding, and Chinese characters play a unique role internally. And in the next section, we pay attention to the individuality of meronymy in different languages. Due to the dissimilarity of segmentation or prototype between Chinese and other languages, the meronymy can be different as well, such as the given examples of the “finger-hand and toe-foot” among Chinese, English and Spanish, and the “lower limb” between Chinese and Japanese. In regard to the consecutiveness in the seventh section, we have particularized the semantic relations among the terms of a series, a hierarchy, a cycle, an antipodal array, etc. It is very common in Chinese that the consecutive terms form a coordinate set phrase. We also dovetail the discussion of collocation and lexical solidarity into this chapter because they reflect restrictive relations between words at the semantic level. In the eighth section, after briefly reviewing the existing studies on collocation, we give an example of the words 烟 (yān, tobacco, cigarette), 酒 (jiǔ, alcoholic beverage) and 茶 (chá, tea), to illustrate the cultural connotation and pluralism of conventional collocations. Next, we have analyzed three collocational instances respectively: • Redundant collocations, such as “provide help”, “ask questions”, “give cooperation”, “let out cry”, etc. in English. The verbs take a role of auxiliary. The Chinese “Nouny Verbs” (名动词 míngdòngcí), for example, 合作 (hézuò, cooperate, cooperation), 哭泣 (kūqì, sob, weep), 调查 (diàochá, investigate, investigation), 准备 (zhǔnbèi, prepare, preparation), etc., almost perform the same. • Restrictive collocations, like the passive expression “suffer” in Chinese. Diversiform matching options are determined by the objectives, which involve 挨 (ái, suffer), 吃 (chī, eat; suffer), 受 (shòu, receive; suffer), 遭 (zāo, meet with [bad things], suffer), 中 (zhòng, hit; suffer). • Multifunctional collocations of general-purpose verbs (泛义动词 fànyì dòngcí), such as the collocative abundance of 打 (dǎ, beat). In the last section of this chapter, we take the perspective of typology to ascertain the universality and the individuality of Chinese lexical solidarities, which materialize the co-occurrence restriction of words. Distinctively, plenty of monosyllabic solidarities in Chinese language can build compounds like 弓箭 (gōngjiàn, bow and arrow), 买卖 (mǎimài, buy and sell, business, shop), 伐树 (fáshù, cut down trees), 狼嗥 (lángháo, wolf’s howling), etc. And also, many Chinese lexical solidarities share a same ideographic radical or component in characters, such as 舔 (tiǎn, lick) — 舌 (shé, tongue), 骑 (qí, ride, mount) — 马 (mǎ, horse), 牛 (niú, ox) — 哞 (mōu, moo, bellow), etc. Chapter VII. Register Since the 1960s, the term “register” has been adopted into linguistics denoting the variations of a language that are used in particular social situations. According to the communicative purpose, the social context, or the social status of the user, etc., different vocabulary, pronunciation and syntax can be chose to accord with the needs of language practice. The numerous registers can be identified with their diverse tendencies, however they are not completely discrete, that is to say, there are no clear boundaries between them. In Chinese, a lot of lexical items involve their inherent registers. Thence in this chapter, we proceed to the register analysis on the following Chinese word clusters: • Classical register: archaic words, including historical and literary terms; • Technical or specialist register: terminologies, jargon and argot; • Register being formality scale: formal-informal-neutral trichotomy; • Polite register: honorific and humble words; • Taboo register: taboo words and euphemism; • Vulgar register: curse words; • Emotional register: commendatory words, derogatory words and the neutrals.