This paper presents an interpretation of Gongsun Long's white horse paradox. The Chinese sentence he uses to state his main thesis (Bai ma fei ma) has two potential readings: (a) The white horses are not horses....This paper presents an interpretation of Gongsun Long's white horse paradox. The Chinese sentence he uses to state his main thesis (Bai ma fei ma) has two potential readings: (a) The white horses are not horses. (b) The white horses are not the horses Although (a) gives the usual and correct reading of the sentence, according to the interpretation, Gongsun Long takes it to state (b). He gives good arguments for (b) while taking them to establish (a) as well, for he fails to distinguish between the two different theses. In presenting this interpretation, the paper gives an account of the function of numeral classifiers and discusses the semantics of count nouns in languages with no grammatical number system, including classical Chinese and classifier languages (e.g., contemporary Chinese).展开更多
Chinese noun-classifier compound words show different properties in lexical meaning and syntactic collocation. The complexity of these compounds lies in the grammaticalization of classifiers’ system. Some nouns used...Chinese noun-classifier compound words show different properties in lexical meaning and syntactic collocation. The complexity of these compounds lies in the grammaticalization of classifiers’ system. Some nouns used as classifiers in the position of classifier are not grammaticalized into real classifiers which are temporary classifiers. So some of them are real noun-classifier compounds and some belong to noun-noun compounds. This paper attempts to analyze the structural relation between noun morpheme and classifier morpheme within the word. It also explains that the noun and the classifier compound in the position of light noun in the nP structure.展开更多
文摘This paper presents an interpretation of Gongsun Long's white horse paradox. The Chinese sentence he uses to state his main thesis (Bai ma fei ma) has two potential readings: (a) The white horses are not horses. (b) The white horses are not the horses Although (a) gives the usual and correct reading of the sentence, according to the interpretation, Gongsun Long takes it to state (b). He gives good arguments for (b) while taking them to establish (a) as well, for he fails to distinguish between the two different theses. In presenting this interpretation, the paper gives an account of the function of numeral classifiers and discusses the semantics of count nouns in languages with no grammatical number system, including classical Chinese and classifier languages (e.g., contemporary Chinese).
文摘Chinese noun-classifier compound words show different properties in lexical meaning and syntactic collocation. The complexity of these compounds lies in the grammaticalization of classifiers’ system. Some nouns used as classifiers in the position of classifier are not grammaticalized into real classifiers which are temporary classifiers. So some of them are real noun-classifier compounds and some belong to noun-noun compounds. This paper attempts to analyze the structural relation between noun morpheme and classifier morpheme within the word. It also explains that the noun and the classifier compound in the position of light noun in the nP structure.