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New entries and no entries: Political impact on the choice of entries in the Chinese dictionary Xiandai hanyu cidian

This talk aims at illustrating the development of modern Chinese lexicography and the features of one of the most authoritative monolingual works in this field, the XiàndàiHànyǔ Cídiǎn [XHC]. To this end, I will describe the main steps of Chinese research on lexicography, underlininng the close link between the rise of modern lexicography and specific historical events. Then I will provide a brief historical account about the compilation of XHC illustrating some issues pertaining the XHC compilation and focusing on the wordlist selection, with particular attention to the last edition. Published in 2016, only 4 years after the previous edition, the last one includes over 400 neologisms, nearly 100 new meanings and also some new entries which go beyond the traditional definition of word and therefore deserve to be analyzed.

Chiara Romagnoli is Professor of Chinese language and linguistics at Roma Tre University. Her areas of expertise include Chinese as a foreign language acquisition, Chinese vocabulary, discourse markers and lexicography.

https://www.international.ucla.edu/ccs/event/15984

Feb 17, 2023 10:00 AM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)