Recently, the English Dictionary of Cognate Word Disambiguation (the whole book has 1560 pages), which was compiled by Professor Rong Xinfang of our college alone and edited by the Commercial Press for five years, was published. The publication of this book is another achievement in the construction of dictionaries in China.
The book is the most comprehensive dictionary of its kind at home and abroad, with the largest number of synonyms and synonym phrases, and the words are selected from the perspective of Chinese English learners according to their frequency of use and importance, highlighting the national perspective. The dictionary identifies English synonyms from the perspectives of constituent elements, etymology, semantics (connotation and extension), style, grammar, and domain, and selects examples of appropriate shades of meaning. It guides readers to work on understanding accurately and using appropriately.
Professor Rong Xinfang has published more than 30 papers and completed more than 20 theses, translations and dictionaries in the field of English language and literature. In 2015, he won the second prize in the category of foreign literature (the first prize is vacant) in the 7th Ministry of Education Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scientific Research in Higher Education (Humanities and Social Sciences).
In the preface to the book, Prof. Zhang Boran says, For more than thirty years, Rongjun has been working on his own without degrading himself, and he has been reading by solitary light, night and day, without any interruption. As a renowned scholar of English language and literature, Professor Rong's dedication to research demonstrates his profound academic accumulation.
The construction of dictionaries is one of the fundamental projects in the field of language and culture. High-level dictionaries are an important symbol reflecting the achievements of the construction of the field, and the status of large dictionaries is particularly important.
(Reported by the College of Foreign Languages office; Translated by Li Huixian)
