boltz, william g. - desultory notes on language and semantics in ancient china
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8/4/2019 Boltz, William G. - Desultory Notes on Language and Semantics in Ancient China
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Review: Desultory Notes on Language and Semantics in Ancient China
Author(s): William G. BoltzReviewed work(s):Language and Logic in Ancient China by Chad Hansen
Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1985), pp. 309313Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601710
Accessed: 20/10/2008 08:29
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DESULTORY NOTES ON LANGUAGE AND
SEMANTICS IN ANCIENT CHINA
WILLIAMG. BOLTZ
UNIVERSITYOFWASHINGTON
Professor Hansen takes the observation that all nouns in Chinese are mass nouns as the
starting point for an investigation of how the Chinese view of the relation between things and
their names is fundamentally different from that which is characteristically found in cultures
where Indo-European languages are spoken. In particular he re-analyzes those parts of the Mo
tzu and the Kung-sun Lung tzu that deal with logic and logical arguments, in the light of his
claims about the structure of Classical Chinese nouns. The work suffers from considerable
carelessness and sloppiness in terminology and thesis, as well as being flawed in its presentationof the relevant parts of Classical Chinese grammar.
To KNOW WHAT THE PEOPLE of an ancient culture
believed, and how they thought, it is necessary first to
read what they wrote. Beyond this obvious require-ment it has not infrequently occurred to studentsand scholars of ancient cultures that the languagein which those texts are written, and which, perhapsin a less refined form, those people spoke, may it-
self constitute the next best approach to such ques-tions. Ever since Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf
allowed for the possibility that the structure and cate-
gories of a person's language may impose a certainform on that person's thinking the idea that "language
shapes thought" has held a sometimes irresistibleallurefor critics, analysts, and exegetes of philosophy and
metaphysics.In the case of China, because Chinese differs from
the Indo-European languages in ways that speakers, ofthe latter consider significant, this idea has exerted a
particularly strong influence on Western studies of
language and thought in ancient China.' ProfessorHansen's book presents us now with the most specific,
* This is a review article of Language and Logic in Ancient
China. By Chad Hansen. Pp. x + 207. Ann Arbor: THE
UNIVERSITYFMICHIGAN PRESSMichigan Studies on China
Series), 1983. $25.00.
For a good example of the extent to which notions about
the way in which language is perceivedas influencing thoughtcan be carried, see Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking ofEastern Peoples, rev. English translation edited by Philip P.
Wiener (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1964); for
China, see esp. pp. 175-294.
most sophisticated, and most carefully adumbratedversion yet of this claim.
Hansen bases his claim largely on the consequencesof a single feature of Chinese, namely the suppositionthat all nouns behave in the grammar like mass nouns,none like count nouns. That is to say, all Chinese
nouns are comparable to English "honey," which
designates a universal but discontinuous mass, and canbe neither counted nor made plural without the use of
a measure word of some kind, e.g., "a comb of ... ""two jars of ... ;" and no Chinese noun is comparableto English "beehive,"which stands for a single, count-
able item. Hansen calls this observation about Chinesenouns the "Mass Noun Hypothesis," and makes it thecornerstone of his speculative edifice. He argues for its
validity in general for all varieties of Chinese, ancientand modern alike, but since his hermeneutic interestslie in pre-Han texts the real thrust of his claim iscentered squarely on Classical Chinese.
The Mass Noun Hypothesis is in itself neither espe-cially novel nor particularly controversial; it has longbeen recognized as valid for modern Chinese. But forClassical Chinese it is only partially true. Nouns in
Classical Chinese can be counted directly without theuse of a measure word, and to this extent
theybehave
like count nouns. Hansen acknowledges this fact, butdoes not let it shake his faith in the fundamental statusof the Mass Noun Hypothesis. He says only that thenouns "in the language of the pre-Han philosophersseemed like hybrids," and that "this produced puzzlesfor the pre-Han semanticists, the Neo-Mohists." (p. 33.)Rather than using the term "hybrid,"with its somewhat
inapplicable biological connotations, it might be better
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Journal of the American OrientalSociety 105.2 (1985)
if we describe Classical Chinese nouns as neutral with
respect to the "mass/count" dichotomy. We would
then like to know how their neutrality in this regardaffects the force of the Mass Noun Hypothesis and its
implications.
What is new here is Hansen's attempt to makesense out of certain parts of the Mo tzu, and the
Kung-sun Lung tzu based on the Mass Noun Hypothe-sis, and its general implications for understandingChinese thinking. "Behavioral Nominalism" is the
term Hansen gives to the Chinese view shaped bythe effect of the Mass Noun Hypothesis. He charac-
terizes this view as follows:
Language onsistsof ming A "names" hichhavea
one-to-onerelation o shih'
"stuffs."Chineseontol-
ogy... ismereological.oreveryabstractetof objectsone can constructa concretemereological bject by
regarding ll of the members f the set as one discon-tinuousstuff. Identifying ifferentmembers f the set
is the same as identifying patio-temporallyifferent
partsof the same stuff. In learningnameswe learn o
discriminate r dividereality nto thesemereologicalstuffswhichnamesname.Naming s notgrounded n
the notion of an abstractconcept, a property,an
essence, or an ideal type, but rather on finding"boundaries" etweenthings. Accordingly,Chinese
philosophers iew mindsnot as repositories f weird
objectscalled ideas,but as the facultyencompassingthe abilities and inclinationsto discriminate tuffs
fromeachother.Thismassstuffviewcan beexplainedby specialfeaturesof the logicalstructure f Chinese
nouns. pp.31-32.)2
2 The translationof shih , as "stuff,"with the solecistic
plural hat Hansen nsistson adding,canonlystrikeone as,at best,peculiar.Millerhas shown hat thiswas an importantpartof the vocabularywhereby he Chineseexpressed heirown view of their language;and that by medieval imes ithad becomea centraltechnical erm in the native inguistictradition, tandingas a complemento hsii , "empty."RoyAndrew Miller, "The Far East," in Current Trends in Lin-
guistics 13.2,ed. ThomasA. Sebeok[The Hague:Mouton,
1973],p. 1227.)Hansen'suse of the technical erm"mereological"s bor-
rowedfrom the workof the Polishphilosopher nd logicianStanisfawLesniewski 1884-1939)who invented the term
"mereology"o designatea theoryof extendedindividualsand of certainspecial kindsof relationsbetweenpartandwhole.Although t has come to refer o any general heoryoftherelationof part o whole, t is notclearhow thetermaddsto the precisionof Hansen'sargumentshere. See also thereviewby ChristophHarbsmeier,n EarlyChina9 (1984).
Given this understanding of nominalism, Hansen
points out that to look for an explanation of the Kung-sun Lung tzu's pai ma fei ma (- .%~ .-. "paradox"based on semantic abstractions like "whiteness" is
irrelevant and pointless since Chinese philosophy is not
based on the assumption that the semantic relation ofnames to things is a one-many relationship."(p. 143.)
Essential to the discussions of the meaning of boththe Kung-sun Lung tzu and the Mo tzu passages is a
clear understanding of two fundamental terms, and
how they apply to the arguments of the texts: t'i 4
(printed scriptum nipponicum, 4, in Hansen's book),and chien ,. The first, in a casual sense means, of
course, "body, substance," but in the formal sense of
these texts Hansen translates if as mass-stuff. The
latter, meaning in simple terms "conjunction, union"
formally designates a "compound"of two t'i such that
it includes anything that is either one of the two. Thus
the expression niu-ma 't- is a chien of the two t'i niuand ma, referringto everything that is either niu or ma.
It is the sum, in other words, of these two t'i, and
Hansen translates the word chien as mass-sum. A. C.
Graham explains t'i and chien as fundamentallynumerical, designating them as "unit" and "total"
respectively. And he goes on to point out that "anychien may in turn be treated as a t'i and counted as one
in a new total."3
The rub comes when we realize, as did the pre-HanChinese, that besides mass-sum compounding there is
also what Hansen calls mass-product compounding,
that is, names that designate the intersection (or over-lapping) of two things, such that the compound X Y
names everything that is both X and Y. The stock
example is chien-pai ( 7 "hard-white." But such
compounds are not chien compounds because the X
and Y terms of a chien compound are t'i "corporealstuffs." Hansen calls these terms"non-corporealstuffs,"and says that compounds of them for the Neo-Mohists
are "mass-products in which the stuffs interpenetrate,"and that the relation between these non-corporealstuffs, and their mass-product compounds "should berelative in the same way the t'i-chien relation is."
(p. 158.) By that he means that such a compound, like
a chien compound, can also be a single term in a higherlevel compound.
It is the different way that these entities, and these
compounds, are understood that characterizes the dif-ferent "concepts of language" underlying the Mo tzuand the Kung-sun Lung tzu, the latter being the more
uncompromising of the two. For the Neo-Mohists niu-
3 A. C. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Science
(HongKong:ChineseUniversityPress,1978),p. 265.
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BOLTZ: esultory Notes on Languageand Semantics in Ancient China
ma as a chien compound names the stuff that is consti-
tuted of all niu plus all ma in the universe; or some
designated portion thereof. So both niu and ma are t'i
"corporeal stuffs." But since the mass-sum niu-ma can
function as a single t'i in a higher level chien com-
pound, say niuma-hsiungt J' ,. ? ;, ox-horse andelder brother-younger brother" (= "draft animals
and brothers"), it must at times be conceived of
as a unitary entity. It is this variability between
"now compound, now unitary" in the interpretationof terms like niu-ma and hsiung-ti that disturbed
the Kung-sun Lung tzu partisans, who preferredto insist that a term be taken consistently one way or
the other in all of its occurrences.
Hansen's discussion of these matters is spread
throughout the last third of the book, making it
sometimes difficult to get a clear picture of his explana-tion or a clear sense of the direction of his arguments.
Things that to him may be perfectly apparent, because
they are so familiar, may be very obscure to those of us
who do not truck in the argot of the philosopher on a
daily basis. Had the University of Michigan Press
editors given more attention to this aspect of the
presentation, it would have made for a less confusingbook. The problem is compounded by the haphazard
way Chinese characters are sometimes present, some-
times absent, and sometimes wrong. A particularlyunfortunate case of the last is the appearance of ~ on
p. 150 in the heart of one of the explanations of chien
and t'i when 4, is meant. Given the stock example of
chien-paiJ
7"hard-white" o illustrate mass-productcompounding we are faced with a plethora of chien's
on these pages, mostly without any characters given,and the consequent confusion to which this gives rise.
Hansen's frequent references to the chien-pai "hard-
white" issue raises a further,and more significant issue,viz. the problem of the authenticity and reliability of
the texts. Graham showed already in 1956 that the
Kung-sun Lung tzu essay on "hard-white"was a late
concoction, done sometime after A.D.300, perhaps as
late as A.D.600, and further showed in 1967 how that
"forgery" had colored all efforts to understand the
Mo tzu references to "hard-white" for the next millen-
nium and a half.4 The Mo tzu text itself is widelyrecognized as being substantially corrupt, and efforts
4 A. C. Graham,"TheCompositionof theGongsuenLongTzyy,"Asia Major, n.s. 5.2 (1956), 147-183 (erroneouslygivenas 1957 n Hansen's SelectedBibliography"),nd "The'Hard and White' Disputationsof the ChineseSophists,"Bulletinof the School of Orientaland AfricanStudies30
(1967),358-368.
at emendation to make it understandable have been
legion. The problem with this, as Hansen correctly
points out (p. 103) is that the "understandableness"
invoked to justify these emendations is no more than a
particularperson's opinion about what the text "ought"
to mean, often based on no more than her or his ownphilosophical and linguistic predispositions. Hansen
suggests that "theory-based constraints" on both the
emendation and interpretation of the text will keep the
kind of free-wheeling conjectural emendations that
have traditionally characterized textual studies of the
Mo tzu and the Kung-sun Lung tzu in check.
Emendation, unctuation, ndthe likeoughtnot to
be triggeredby a test of what makes sense to the
interpreter,utbywhatwouldhavemadesense o the
author,giventhe dominantoutlook of hisphilosophi-cal milieu,the presuppositions,ontemporary evel-
opments n philosophy, ndso on. (p. 103)
But this simply substitutes one kind of a priori presup-
positions for another. Guesses about how a particulartext conforms to the "dominantoutlook" of the author's
"philosophical milieu" are no better bases for textual
emendation than are the textual critic's own biases, in
spite of the formal sounding name, "theory-basedconstraints," that Hansen invokes. In practice Hansen
has relied, as he freely acknowledges, on Graham's
very thorough and very detailed textual studies, thereby
avoiding having to confront that complicated issue
himself. His concluding part of Chapter 5 is a transla-tion and commentary of the "White Horse Paradox"
(pp. 161-170), and here also we see a strong relianceon Graham's earlier work. While Hansen has made oneor two changes in the order of the text, his translationfollows Grahamvery closely. His discussion, of course,does not; because Graham included many textual
arguments of no interest to Hansen who is concernedrather with the "philosophical exegesis" of the text.
Apart from the vexing problem of textual authen-
ticity and reliability there is one other primary con-
sideration that must be commented on in such a
study: the author's approach to and understanding
of Classical Chinese grammar. In the course ofhis presentation of the Mass Noun Hypothesis in
chapter 2 we are given some fairly detailed commentson how Hansen understands Classical Chinese gram-mar, and this reveals, regrettably, some serious mis-
conceptions. For example:
In Chinese hedistinctionsbetweenwhat we woulddescribeas nounsandadjectives rerather ubtle....Most graphscan occureitheras terms or predicate
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Journal of the American Oriental Society 105.2 (1985)
expressions.A celebrated xample s Confucius's en-
tence, "fu 'father'fu 'father'."There is no is, no
predicate xpressiondenoting dentityor inclusion, n
Chinese, p.45.)
To say that "the distinctions between . .. nouns and
adjectives are rather subtle" is like saying "the distinc-
tions between poker chips and gambling are rather
subtle." A poker chip is a thing, and gambling is one of
the things you can do with it. In a parallel way a"noun" is a thing, i.e., a word-class label, and "adjec-tive," to the extent that it has any meaning in Classical
Chinese grammar at all, designates one possible func-tion of the things we call "nouns."Hansen has confused
"word-class," which is entirely independent of sentencestructure and usage, with "function," i.e., the way aword may be used in a sentence. There is no word-class
"adjective"in Classical Chinese, nor are there any so-called "predicate adjectives" (e.g., "green," "great,"
"garish" in English). In Classical Chinese these are
"verbs," no different from other verbs like "jump,""kick,"and "dance."What Hansen means by "graphs"
occurring "either as terms or predicate expressions" is
a mystery, since, first of all, "graphs"are elements of a
writing system, not of a language, secondly, "terms" snot a well-defined term, and in any case any "term"or
"graph," if by these we mean "word," can occur in
Classical Chinese as a predicate expression.Hansen has misunderstood the "celebratedexample"
from Lun vii X 1.I I fuu fu precisely because he
fails to recognize the distinction between word-classand function. Both fu's belong to the word-class
"noun," indeed they are the same word. This is aninherent lexical property of the word fu "father,"and
has nothing to do with the word's use here or anywhereelse. In the sentence Hansen cites the first fu is
functioning as "subject,"the second is functioning as a
predicate. The reason "there is no is, no predicateexpression denoting identity or inclusion" is becausethis is not an "identity" (i.e., equational or apposi-tional) sentence. It is a predicative sentence where the
predicate happens to be a word that belongs to theword-class "noun." It is a fundamental and
generalrule in Classical Chinese grammar that when a nounfunctions as a predicate the meaning is "the subjectbehaves in the way typical of, proper to, or expected ofthe noun." The sentence means "Thefather behaves the
way fathers are expected to behave," or ". . . ought to
behave...," or in the larger context of the wholeLun uii assage "If (or when) fathers behave in the wayproper to fathers . . .". This, like all Classical Chinese
predicative sentences, attributes an action, or a state
(not equal to an identity!) to the subject of the sen-
tence. If the sentence were equational as Hansenassumes it to be, it would have to end with a sentence-final yeh e according to the rules of Classical Chinese
grammar. Hansen does comment on this, and seems to
regardthe sentence asjust a defective, or grammaticallywanting, equational sentence. While such sentences do
occur, of course, the pre-Han Chinese being no lessvulnerable to grammatical lapses than anyone else,that this is not such a sentence is proved beyonddispute by the form of its negated counterpart a fewlines later in the same Lun yii passage: viz. fu pu fu
3-?- 3 . The negative marker I/, as is well-known,can only' negate predicate sentences; the negative for
identities, i.e., equational sentences, is fei .
The foregoing brief grammatical excursus is not
merely pedantic rambling or gratuitous fault-finding,
but pertains directly to Hansen's understanding of thenature and structure of Classical Chinese, which in itsturn determines how he arrives at, and conceives of,the Mass Noun Hypothesis, the cornerstone of hisendeavor. That these misconceptions do not affect his
subsequent discussions of the Mo tzu and the Kung-sun Lung tzu passages more than they do is largelybecause, as we have said, Hansen has relied heavily onthe work of A. C. Graham for the textual and gram-matical aspects of his study.
There is both in this chapter and throughout thework a somewhat dismaying failure to recognize thedifference between a language and a writing system,
and this muddies a good deal of Hansen's discussionon these matters. Not only does this include the simplesloppiness of saying "graph"or "character"when hemeans "word" but it leads to such startling misrepre-sentations of, and apparent misunderstandings of, theChinese language and script as the following:
There resome inesofthought boutmental ntitieswhich seem to be generatedby reflectionson our
ability to master an inflectedphonemic language which
would lack appeal if one's model of language were
nonphonemic, that is, "pictographic"or "ideographic."
and
Each haracter asa one-syllable ronunciation....The charactersprovided a sharedmode of communica-
tion amongthe differentChinese anguages ince it
(sic) did not represent any particular pronunciation.(both p. 47, emphasis added.)
What on earth is meant by "an inflected phonemic
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BOLTZ: esultorYNotes on Language and Semantics in Ancient China
language" as opposed to a "nonphonemic... 'picto-
graphic' or 'ideographic'" one? "Phonemic" has to do
with the systematic analysis of the sounds of a
language, according to some (but not all) phonologicaltheories. "Pictographic" and "ideographic," to the
extent that they are relevant to language at all, have todo with writing systems.
All languages in the world, we make bold to assert,have sounds, and thus can be analyzed phonemically.
Comparatively few languages have writing systems of
any kind, and none has an "ideographic" writing
system for the simple reason that there is in fact no
such thing. In footnote 25 to this passage Hansen
admits that he does not understand why "Chinese
linguists" (and careful scholars of all kinds, I might
add) "seem to prefer the term logographic" (p. 179,
emphasis original.) A writing system by definition is a
system for representing the sounds of a languagegraphically. It just so happens that individual graphs,or characters, in the Chinese script represent those
sounds at the level of the word, like our numbersdo, 1,
2, 3, .. ., not at the level of the single sound, as we are
generally accustomed to because of our familiaritywith the Roman alphabet. Writing represents the
utterances of a language. Words may stand for ideas in
some sense that satisfies the yearnings of philosophersand poets. But writing is a more mundane business,and stands only for the sounds of those words. In anycase, in a society that is predominantly pre-literate, as
all ancient societies must have been, and many modern
ones still are, clearly the way the language is writtencan have virtually no effect on the way the speakersthink, since it is entirely beyond the ken of the vast
majority of them.
In chapter 3, "Background and Theories of Lan-
guage," Hansen identifies four categories of implicit
assumptions that he thinks can be attributed to Chinese
"classical thought about language"; (1) assumptionsabout the function of language, (2) about the way in
which language relates to the real world, (3) aboutthe origin and status of language, and (4) "miscella-
neous contrasts in assumptions about the relationbetween
languageand mental or
abstract objects"(pp. 57-58.) Beyond this, the chapter is a singularlyconfusing concatenation of short excurses on one or
another of these assumptions as they appear to applyto various pre-Han texts, e.g., the Lao tzu, Chuangtzu, Lun yi, etc. Each short excursus is headed with a
title, sometimes in italics, sometimes orthic, rangingfrom such benign captions as "The Tao Te Ching" to
dizzying abstractions like "Nominalism in the Philos-
ophy of Mind" (orthic) and "Monism and Mysticism"
(italic). The problem in general is that Hansen has
tried to cover too many complex issues too superfi-
cially. For him the attitudes toward language seen in,
e.g., the Lao tzu or the Lun yii are "background,"but
in fact they are of comparable interest, comparable
depth, and comparable significance, to those of the
Neo-Mohists and Kung-sun Lung tzu that he deals
with here. Much of the discussion in this "background"
chapter, especially the sections dealing with "Confucius
and the Rectification of Names," "Conventionalism,"
and "Nominalism" (pp. 77-82) could have profitedfrom a reading of Roy Andrew Miller's substantialtreatment of linguistic traditions in the Far East.5
In spite of the many criticisms raised about specific
points in the foregoing pages, we must in conclusion
see that the single most important general considera-tion is that Hansen has tried to see Chinese on its own
terms, and to understand the texts more sinico, an
approach that ought to seem the most natural, butone that in practice has not always been effectively
pursued in the past. It is to Hansen's credit thathe has forced the issue here. By scrutinizing the lan-
guage in as great detail as he does, Hansen puts
his understanding of the texts, and of the logic thatunderlies them, squarely on the nature of the languageitself, resisting the impulse to see in the texts mean-
ings, theories, concepts, and ideas of general philo-sophical currency that he does not find expresslyattested in the language of the texts themselves. Han-sen is not always careful, nor is he always right, buthis motives and his seriousness of purpose, togetherwith the many thought-provoking and provocativeremarks and observations that he introduces through-out the work make this a book that repays careful
reading.
5Op.cit., n. 2.
313
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