Notes on Chinese grammar and ontology: the endurant/perdurant dichotomy and Mandarin D-M compounds

Chu-Ren Huang

doi:10.1186/s40655-015-0004-6

Abstract

Y. R. Chao’s (1955) ‘Notes on Chinese Grammar and Logic’ illustrated how logical relations are encoded in Chinese Grammar and his Chinese grammar (Chao 1968) introduced the grammatical category of Measure (M) in Determiner-Measure (D-M) Compounds. Subsequent studies of Chinese typically adopt the general linguistic term of classifier (Aikenvald 2003) and either refer to Chao’s M as a classifier (e.g. Li and Thompson 1981) or assume that it can be further subdivided into two categories: classifiers and measure words (Tai 1994). Many later studies tried to account for the classifiers/measure words contrast via semantic or syntactic tests without reaching a definite conclusion. This paper adopts and merges two lines of Chao’s research to show that the ontological concept of endurant vs. perdurant is elegantly instantiated in Chinese grammar, and by the category of M in particular. By doing so I hope to follow Y. R. Chao’s (1955) giant leap in studying logical relations in Chinese and to take the further step of exploring the significance of the Chinese language for ontological studies, including issues such as whether Quality should be ontologically dependent on entities or instead subsumed by them.

Highlights

1 Introduction In the way of Chao’s (1955) seminal paper on Chinese logical relations, this paper focuses on how two foundational ontological notions find expression in the Chinese language
4 Conclusion I have shown in this paper that the Chinese classifier system offers robust linguistic expression of the ontological notions of endurant vs. perdurant
The dichotomy is encoded with the sortal classifier vs. measure words sub-systems of the Chinese classifiers

Summary

Introduction

In the way of Chao’s (1955) seminal paper on Chinese logical relations, this paper focuses on how two foundational ontological notions find expression in the Chinese language. As Chinese is a language that has been shown to explicitly encode ontology with its radical-based writing system (Chou and Huang 2010, Huang et al 2013b), it is natural for us to ask whether the endurant/perdurant dichotomy is represented in Chinese To answer this question, the classifier system, which marks linguistic classifications of objects, should be the first system to be examined. Many upper ontologies adopt the endurant/perdurant dichotomy for this primary classification, in somewhat different ways This fundamental classification of entities roughly corresponds to what is called continuant and occurrent in philosophy (Gangemi et al 2003, Grenon and Smith 2004). This ontological interpretation of the Chinese orthography laid a foundation for accounts of its conceptual robustness and representational versatility as the shared writing system through historical changes (Chou and Huang 周亞民, 黃居仁 2006) and for typologically divergent languages (Huang and Chou 2015)

Classifiers as an ontological system

Findings

Conclusion