CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Present Study
As the core part of a dictionary, lexicographers have made great efforts to improve thedefinitions of words in dictionaries. As the commonest things in our daily life,animals are closely related to human beings. For English learners, there are manyEnglish animal words that are dispersed among the whole dictionary. But these entriesin current dictionaries like Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD), LongmanDictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) are arranged in an alphabetic order,thus causing the semantic network to be fragmented artificially and unintentionally.As a dictionary is so huge a project that needs to be done by different compilerscollaboratively, it is inevitable that animals belonging to the same category aredefined with different definition patterns, which makes them difficult to identify andacquire, thus causing confusion to language learners and burdening the userstremendously. So we need to pay enough attention to this problem.Thanks to the development of linguistics, we can solve this problem with the aidof categorization. Labov (1973: 342) once said: “If linguistics can be said to be anyone thing it is the study of categories: that is, the study of how language translatesmeaning into sound through the categorization of reality into discrete units and sets ofunits.” Therefore, human beings categorize everything from different perspectives tomeet their needs. Categorization has always been used in human being’s cognition ofthe world because it fits the principle of cognitive economy. Lakoff (1987) indicatesthat objective world is consisted of complex natural and man-made substance, andhuman beings’ability of categorization is the basic and key process to get to know theworld. There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception,action and speech. Therefore, it is practical and necessary for lexicographers tocompile a dictionary that fits the human beings’ cognitive process, thus making the users understand the meanings of related lexical units much easier. Besides,lexicographer can use categorization to construct uniform definition patterns to speedup the compilation of the words that belong to the same category.
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1.2 Research Contents: Objective and Issues
The objective of our present research is to construct a uniform definition pattern foranimal words. However, considering that the kingdom of animals is so large that it isdifficult to present all of them in the thesis, the bird words are chosen as the researchobjective. With the new definition pattern generalized from them, English learnersmay form a holistic semantic structure of the bird words in their mind, thus making iteasy for them to give any bird word a satisfying definition. In order to achieve thisgoal, the following questions must be answered:(1) How are bird words categorized based on the schema theory and what aretheir schematic features respectively?(2) What are the current problems on the definitions of the bird words in currentELDs?(3) How can we use the schema theory to construct a uniform definition pattern for bird words?
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CHAPTER TWORELEVANT STUDIES ON CATEGORIZATION DEFINITION ANDON ANIMAL WORDS
2.1 Category and Categorization
The world, as we all know, consists of all kinds of things or objects that we havealready discovered or that are waiting to be explored. In face of so large amount ofthings or objects that seem chaotic and unrelated, how can human beings figure outthe various complex relations and recognize them? The basic and also the key answeris that human beings categorize the objective things or objects to recognize andmemorize them. This method of dividing things or objects into different categoriesenables human beings to interact with the objective world no matter how complex theworld is. This mental process of classifying the things or objects is now commonlycalled categorization, and its product is the cognitive categories. (Ungered, F. andSchmid, H. J. 2005) As the main way for us to know and interpret the world, thiscognitive way of knowing the world has been existing ever since the cognitiveactivities emerged in human beings’ mind. Human beings will not be able tomemorize and classify so many concrete and abstract things without categorization.Stephen K. Reed (1992) once pointed out its five merits as follows:1. Categorizing objects “reduces the complexity of the environment.” When weclassify discriminably different objects as being equivalent, we respond to them interms of their class membership rather than as unique items.2. Categorizing is “the means by which objects of the world are identified.” Weusually feel that we have recognized a pattern when we can classify it into a familiarcategory such as dog, chair, or the letterA.3. The third achievement is a consequence of the first two: the establishment ofcategories “reduces the need for constant learning.” We do not have to be taught aboutnovel objects if we can classify them; we can use our knowledge of items in thecategory to respond to the novel object.4. Categorizing allows us to “decide what constitutes an appropriate action.” Aperson who eats wild mushrooms must be able to distinguish between poisonous andnonpoisonous varieties.5. Categorizing “enables us to order and relate classes of objects and events.”Although classification is by itself a useful way to organize knowledge, classes can byfurther organized by subordinate and superordinate relation.
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2.2 The Development of Categorization-based Definition
Linguistic theories have long been applied to lexicography in providing some relevanttheoretical foundation in helping dictionary compilers to optimize their way ofdealing with entries in dictionaries.Categorization is an important vehicle for human beings to get to know andexplore the world as people cannot memorize and deal with so many abstract andconcrete things. Therefore, dictionaries are supposed to provide a uniform definitionpattern for words of the same category to fit the principle of cognitive economy. Inthis section, a review on the relevant studies of categorized definition and the need todefining animal words in categorization-based patterns will be illustrated here briefly.
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CHAPTER THREE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THECONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW CATEGORIZED DEFINITIONS........... 15
3.1 Relevant Studies on Schema Theory........15
3.2 TheApplication of the Schema Theory in the Categorized Definition...........22
CHAPTER FOUR THE CATEGORIZATION OF BIRD WORDS BASED ONssdsSCHEMAS.........23
4.1 The Motivation for the Categorization of Bird Words..............23
4.2 The Relationship of the Schemas, Prototypes and Instantiations.........23
4.3 The Schematic Categories of Birds and Their Respective Schematic Features.......25
4.4 Summary...... 31
CHAPTER FIVE THE CURRENT DEFICIENCIES OF THE BIRD WORDSssdsDEFINITIONS IN CURRENT ELDS............33
5.1 Problems of the Definitions of the Singing Birds Category......34
5.2 Problems of the Definitions of the Birds of Prey Category...... 35
5.3 Problems of the Definitions of the Wading Birds Category......37
5.4 Problems of the Definitions of the Swimming Birds Category........... 40
5.5 Summary...... 42
CHAPTER SIXA NEW DEFINITION PATTERN FOR THE BIRD WORDSIN CURRENT ELDS
Based on the schematic category system constructed in Chapter Four and thedeficiencies of bird words definitions in Big Five in Chapter Five, in this chapter weattempt to propose a uniform definition pattern based on birds’schematic features andtheir distinctive features.
6.1 Principles for the Uniform Definition Pattern of Bird Words
Guided by the schema theory, it is of necessity to set up some principles which thedefinitions of the bird words should abide by. In general, the definitions of the birdwords should confirm to the principles of the schema category. The definitions of birdwords should be given the schematic category at first, and then the distinctive featuresalso need to be presented to differentiate members of the same schematic category.From the perspective of the schema theory, a schema is a more abstract concept thanprototype. The schema is the description of the abstract features and it can include andrepresent both of the prototype and the other peripheral members of the same category.That means the schema of a certain category is the foundation of why the prototypeand the peripheral members are gathered together. So in the definitions, we should usedifferent superordinates to indicate their schematic features they all possess, whichmeans that we need to use the six categories of birds as the superordinates. Based onthese schematic features, the users can form a basic idea of which kind of category acertain kind of bird belongs to and then the distinctive features can better help theusers to understand their differences from other kinds of birds. Therefore, it isnecessary to demonstrate them in each new definition.
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CONCLUSION
This thesis focused on the schematic category system and the definition pattern ofbird words in ELDs. Under the schema theory, the schematic features of eachcategory and the distinctive features of bird words were analyzed. Based on thesefeatures each schematic category holds, the new definition pattern is put forward. Bythe construction of the definition pattern for the bird words, the aim of this study wasto fit the principle of the cognitive economy and help to improve the quality ofEnglish learners’dictionaries in terms of bird words definition.In this chapter, the major findings will be summarized, the implications andlimitations will also be presented. At last, some suggestions for the further studies willalso be supplied.In order to propose a new definition pattern for the bird words in ELDs, the author hasdone some research to reach this goal. The major findings in this study are listedbelow:1) All of the bird words extracted from the mainstream ELDs can be classifiedinto the new categories based on the schema theory which fits the cognition of humanbeings.2) The formation of new definition pattern can be constructed based on theschematic features in each category and the distinctive features are employed todistinguish the members of the same category.#p#分页标题#e#
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