The Structure of Chinese Language and Ontological Insights :: China Chinese Language Essays

The Structure of Chinese Language and Ontological Insights ABSTRACT: Through a comparative analysis of the Chinese language, this paper discusses how the structure and functions of a natural language would bear upon the ways in which some philosophical problems are posed and some ontological insights are shaped. By this case analysis, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the elucidation of the relation between language and philosophy in this regard. 1. Introduction Through a comparative case analysis regarding the Chinese language, this paper discusses how the structure and functions of a natural language would bear upon the ways in which some philosophical problems are posed and some ontological insights are shaped. In so doing, I suggest and argue for a mereological collective-noun hypothesis about the denotational semantics of Chinese nouns. By this case analysis, the paper aims to contribute to the elucidation of the relation between language and philosophy in this regard. My discussion begins with a puzzle: why the classical Platonic one-many problem in the Western philosophical tradition has not been consciously posed in the Chinese philosophical tradition and why, generally speaking, classical Chinese philosophers seem less interested in debating the relevant ontological issues. (1) One suspects that the structures and uses of different languages might play their roles in pushing philosophical theorization in different directions; the ways of speaking and writing of the Chinese language might reveal and reflect Chinese folk ideology and then influence the ways in which certain philosophical questions are posed and certain ontological insights are formed. This puzzle is significant because it is concerned with a fundamental philosophical question about the relation between thought and language. The problem of relating Chinese thought to the structure and functions of the Chinese language has for generations tantalized sinologists and those philosophers who are concerned with the problem. Nevertheless, in the last decade, some significant progress has been made in this regard. In his book Language and Logic in Ancient China, (2) Chad Hansen advances a novel and provocative theory about the nature of the classical Chinese language. (3) The central thesis of Hansen's theory is his mass-noun hypothesis. Its main ideas are these: (1) the (folk) semantics of Chinese nouns are like those of mass-nouns (i.e., those nouns referring to the so-called interpenetrating stuffs, like 'water' and 'snow'), and naming in Chinese is not grounded on the existence of, or roles for, abstract entities (either on