한자 사전의 표제자 배열 원칙과 색인에 관한 고찰

Abstract

This study performs a comparative analysis on the principles applied to the arrangement for title characters and indices in five Chinese character dictionaries published in China and Korea. Based on the analysis, the study explores a constructional system to enhance efficiency from the user-oriented perspective in searching for Chinese characters. The results of the analysis are summarized as follows: Firstly, in the arrangement of title characters, the five Chinese dictionaries have adopted the radical-stroke system as the basic principle applied in most cases, followed by the stroke order-stroke feature principles. Secondly, the five Chinese dictionaries share two common features in their index construction: multiple indices and hierarchical construction. In general, an index is constructed with a two-tier system, and the index for total strokes applies ‘[the number of strokes] → [stroke order-stroke feature]’ construction. Thirdly, the indices of these five dictionaries exclude ’the number of radicals’ from the scope of elements for searches, supposedly in consideration of the difficulty of identifying indexing components on the part of general dictionary users. Fourthly, the indices of dictionaries serve as the paths for information searches offered by the dictionary editors. For more efficient searches, it is suggested that Search by Index be constructed in indices and that explicitness of the elements for a search be emphasized. In particular, the elements in a search must be explicitly specified for guide words. In the case where the list of characters complied by the elements from the two-tiered search is too long, it is necessary that the two-tiered search elements be presented for guide words as well.