Grammer type

Hello Mike.
Pleco's dictionary has only intermittent indications of various grammer types. Knowing how a word can be used in different contexts is very useful for leaning and indeed most language learning books i see include this.
E.g
建议 - jiànyì
Verb: recommend
Noun: recommendation

Would it be possible to add more resources to this. Given its a huge task i think the most common few thousand words and only the traditional 8 parts of speach would be great (noun/verb/adj...)
 

Abun

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Don't a lot of the supported dictionaries have that already? Or are we talking about the Pleco C-E specifically?

Personally I think word class (at least in the way learners of an Indo-European language background tend to think of it) is very difficult to handle in Chinese languages. In some cases it's very clear (辞典 for example is quite clearly a noun and means "dictionary"), but in many cases word classes are rather fluid. For example, 德国 seems to be quite clearly a noun, and even a proper noun: "Germany". But there are contexts in which it is not: A few days back our canteen had sauerkraut, potatoes and sausages, prompting a Chinese collegue of mine to exclaim: 今天的菜好德国啊! "Wow, today's food is really 'Germany'" (德国 used in an adjectival slot, meaning "Germany-like, German"). Especially words which prototypically fill verbal slots are frequently used in noun positions: 他们相处得很融洽 ("they are getting on harmoniously"; 相处 as a verb "to stand in contact with each other, to get along with one another") = 他们的相处很融洽 ("their contact is harmonious"; 相处 as a noun "contact, getting-along-with-one-another"). This is in my eyes usually due to fully productive grammatical phenomena instead of different meanings.
建议 I guess is a borderline case. The nominal usage could be viewed as simply the nominalized verb "to suggest", but I think cases like 你有什么建议吗 "do you have any suggestions/anything to suggest" show a real meaning extension as 建议 here means not the act of suggesting but "thing to suggest".

Anyways, I think the case is often not clear at all. Rather than list all the different usages for every word, I believe it is usually more practical to view the word classes in the dictionary more as the prototypical usage, not as the only possible one, and try to get used to the grammatical phenomena which allow words to be used in other slots as well.
 
@Abun Yes I am talking about PLECO C-E, I don't use any other dictionary
Good points but I think even just a first pass at it and most common words would be tremendously helpful.
Of course you can refer them from the example sentences but means digging around a bit

@mikelove Many thanks
 
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