The Chinese English dictionary: An online resource for Chinese English lexicography

Abstract

This study adopts a transnational perspective and attempts to survey a comprehensive range of the lexical outcome of diverse Chinese–English contact ecologies. It constructs a unified systematic framework of identifying and defining contact‐induced lexical items that originated in Chinese by qualitatively analyzing the admitted as well as excluded data of the Chinese English dictionary and evaluates the applicability of the framework by quantitatively checking the data derived from the framework against six sets of lexicographical and corpus data of three Chinese‐based varieties, namely, Hong Kong English, Singapore English and Malaysian English. Three major findings are: (1) Chinese English words (CEWs) are identifiable through three essential sets of parameters: entry form, Chinese orientation and acceptance and currency; (2) the identification criteria could be applied to locate CEWs in Chinese‐based varieties worldwide; and (3) a fair proportion of the CEWs are used in the corpora of the three Asian Englishes in GloWbE.

Word formation of Chinese English words: Evidence from the Chinese English Dictionary

“…The data was collected by the CED project, constructed in a crowdsourcing mode (Kistner, 2013; Lew, 2011; Nagle, 2014; Qin, 2015; Qin & Gao, 2020) from sources of published materials written by proficient bilingual and monolingual speakers which encompass influential English newspapers and magazines, encyclopedia and dictionaries, translated classic works, etc. in their online and printed forms.…”

“…Up until September 2018, 724 volunteers have contributed a total of 4157 entries. (For detailed information on the macro‐structure, micro‐structure, data sources, editorial policy and compiling practice, please see Qin, 2015; Qin & Gao, 2020.) These entries included 3522 valid entries which form the dataset of the present study and 635 invalid entries.…”

“…These entries included 3522 valid entries which form the dataset of the present study and 635 invalid entries. (For a detailed analysis of the invalidation and classification of these 635 terms, please see Qin & Gao, 2020.) Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the 4157 pieces of lexicographical data, three sets of selection criteria were proposed in terms of form, source, and usage (Qin & Gao, 2020) which are specified in Table 3.…”

“…The synchronic feature of CED mainly arises from its crowdsourced compilation pattern (Qin & Gao, 2020). The scholarly exactness and editorial rigorousness required in a historical dictionary are hard to maintain in a crowdsourced project like CED as most of its volunteer editors are EFL learners in China.…”

“…This study is intended to fill in this gap by utilizing data from a crowdsourced lexicographical project initiated by the first author in 2014, the Chinese English Dictionary ( CED ). By September 2018, the dictionary had collected 3522 valid Chinese English words entries through four years of collaborative compiling efforts (Qin, 2015; Qin & Gao, 2020). Görlach once commented, ‘it would be more than rash to attempt such a quantification of innovations in the lexicons of the varieties under discussion when we do not even have anything approaching satisfactory words lists of them’ (1995, p. 88).…”