Chapter One Introduction
The study of word classes has lasted for more than 2000 years. The word classproblem in over 1000 analytic languages can be seen as the Goldbach Conjecture inlinguistics. Notably, in the 36thAnnual Conference of the German Linguistic Society in2014, the issue of word classes is regarded as the study of “God Particles” of language.Word class labeling in modern Chinese has always been a hard-nut to crack inlexicography. Accordingly, word class labeling in Chinese-foreign languagedictionaries which is based on the one in its Chinese counterparts turns out to be athrony task as well. In this chapter, a brief introduction of the motivations of the study,the objectives of the study and the layout of the study wil be presented.
1.1 Motivations of the Study
Over the last century, more and more articles focusing on word classes arepublished in well-known international journals like Linguistic Typology, TheoreticalLinguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and Studies in Language, etc. These all reveal thatmore and more scholars have realized the important status of word classes.Word class categorization has always been a complicated part in linguistic study,since different scholars adovacate different criteria in identifying categories. The firstGreek system of eight classes was put forward by Dionysios Thrax (217-145AD) in hisArt of Grammar, integrating semantic criterion with morphological standard whenmaking a classification between different classes. Croft (1991, 2001) and Anward et al.(1997) put forward that word class disctinction is decided by morphology. However,when it comes to Chinese, a language lack of morphological changes, the theory oftaking the morphological perspective is untenable. Langacker (2009) holds that theword class of an individual word should be defined by its grammatical construction.Because language knowledge goes throught recurrent changes in the process oflanguage use. Grammatical functionality derived from the language change processcannot be easily found only by the single construction the word presents. From theperspective of language as a complex adaptive system (Beckner, et al., 2009), usagepatterns bring great influences on how a language is acquired, used and evolved.Therefore, we cannot define the word class of a word solely on the level of syntax.According to Usage-based Theory, grammar is the cognitive organization of one’sexperience with language, thus, language use and use frequency can greatly affect thecognitive representation and conventionalization of linguistics structure and can offer anexplanation for the language evolution and acquisition (Bybee, 2007, 2010; Bybee &Hopper, 2001; Croft, 2000; Langacker, 2000). Later, Hanks put forward the Theory ofNorms and Exploitations, which holds that use frequency determines theconventionalized use of each individual word. So, based on Hanks, Wang Renqianghold that both word class in syntax at parole and word class in lexicon at langue shouldbe considered when it comes to word class identification, and the word class on lexiconlevel cannot be determined by an individual grammatical construction, but by usefrequency of the word (Wang Renqiang, 2014). Now, it is nearly a universal agreementthat word classes depend on grammatical function, supplemented by meaning (ZhuDexi, 1982, 1985; Quirk et al, 1985; Lankoff, 1987; Hu Mingyang, 1996, 2004; Yuanyulin, 1995, 2005; Beck, 2002; Guo Rui, 2002; Lu Jianming, 2003; Xing Fuyi, 2003;Taylor, 2003; Schachter&Sophen, 2007; Wang Renqiang, 2010). At present, the Theoryof Two Levels in Word Class Identification is not yet widely spread, so great limitationsstill exist in related research.
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1.2 Objectives of the Study
Firstly, this thesis investigates the overall statistic results of word class labeling of“X 化 ” disyllabic lexemes in GDCFC and assess accuracy based on large corpus.Secondly, this research compares statistic results drawn from GDCFC with CCD6 inorder to find out any dis
