Mole Crickets and Ants, Reconsidered

It is commonplace to characterize the philosophy of Early China as attuned to interconnections and informed by the implications of situations and environments. This portrait of early Chinese philosophy encourages us to speculate about whether the same was true of concepts of “language” in Early China. Should we reconsider the habit of interpreting the foundational term of Chinese logic, ming 名, as “word,” as opposed to “name”? Whereas a word or “word-type” is an element of linguistic theory (static and uniform, regardless of its definitional criteria), a name is a means for labeling something. A word is the kind of thing that can be found in a dictionary, and it encompasses functional terms like “in.” By contrast, dictionaries generally omit most names because names simply refer to entities. If we mistakenly conceive of ming through the retrospective framework of a zi 字 (graph), a ming might look more like a word than a name. It is anachronistic, however, to think that early Chinese texts used the term “ming” to mean what is later meant by zi. Thus, I argue, a more promising starting point for understanding uses of ming in early Chinese texts is the idea of a name.

This issue presents the research on early Chinese texts by Cao Feng, a philosophy professor at Tsinghua University. He is an expert in early Chinese political philosophy and philosophy of language found in transmitted and excavated texts. His extensive education in Japan has left him well versed in Japanese sinology. Although a critical researcher in the field of early Chinese thought and a very prolific writer in both Chinese and Japanese, Cao Feng is little known in the West. This issue introduces three papers selected in consultation with the author: a reflection on the study of excavated texts, the "Huang" component of so-called Huang-Lao thought, and views on language in the Laozi.

Historians generally describe Zhang Taiyan (Binglin , 1869-1936) as an anti-Manchu revolutionary and treat his Buddhism as subordinate to this larger political project. Far less commonly understood is Zhang's role in preparing the groundwork for the establishment of Chinese philosophy as an academic discipline. Against the backdrop of an intellectual climate in Japan and China during the decades either side of 1900, in which a premium had come to be placed on logic as a precondition for the development of philosophy, Zhang was one of the first Chinese intellectuals to follow the lead of Japanese scholars in maintaining that classical Chinese philosophers had developed indigenous forms of logic. Significantly, he further argued that Chinese versions of Yogacara texts on Buddhist logic and epistemology (yinming ; Skt. hetu-vidya) made it possible once again to gain a proper understanding of China's earliest writings on logic. In this paper I argue that Zhang sought to establish that early Chinese texts "bear witness" to insights into realities that transcend individual cultures but are most fully and systematically articulated in Yogacara systems of learning; and that classical Chinese philosopher-sages had attained an awareness of the highest truths, evidence of which can be found in their writings. In short, I will show that Zhang used Yogacara to affirm the value of "Chinese philosophy" and, in doing so, helped shape its early definition.

This paper discusses certain conceptual tensions in a set of archeological texts from the Warring States period, the Guodian corpus. One of the central themes of the Guodian corpus is the disanalogy between spontaneous, natural familial relationships and artificial political relationships. This is problematic because, like many early Chinese texts, the Guodian corpus believes that political relationships must come to be characterized by unselfconsciousness and spontaneity if social order is to prevail. This tension will be compared to my earlier work on the “paradox of wu-wei (effortless action),” and the Guodian corpus’ “solution” to the problem of teaching spontaneity—drawing upon the transformative power of music—will be placed within the landscape of early “Confucian” and “Daoist” theories concerning human nature and self-cultivation.

Early Chinese Texts on Painting. Compiled and edited by Susan Bush and Hsio-Yen Shih. Cambridge, Mass.: Published for the Harvard-Yenching Institute by Harvard University Press, 1985. xii, 391 pp. Illustrations; Biographies of Painters, Critics, and Calligraphers; Glossary of Chinese Terms; Glossary of Chinese Names and Titles; Bibliography; Index. $20.00.

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This article looks beyond the dichotomy between silence (mo 默) and speech (yan 言) and discusses the functions of and attitudes toward silence in the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋 as a case representing the variety of ideas of silence in early China. In the West, silence has been widely explored in fields such as religion and theology, linguistic studies, and communication and literary studies. The consensus has moved away from viewing silence as abstaining from speech and utterance—and therefore absence of meaning and intention, toward seeing it as a culturally dependent and significant aspect of communication. However, beyond a number of studies discussing unspoken teachings in relation to early Daoism, silence has received little attention in early China studies. This article approaches the functions of silence by pursuing questions regarding its rhetorical, emotive, political, and ethical aspects. Instead of searching for the nature of silence and asking what silence is, this article poses alternative questions: How do ancient Chinese thinkers understand the act of silence? What are the attitudes toward silence in early China? How does silence foster morality? How does silence function as performative remonstrance? How is it used for political persuasion? How does silence draw the attention of and communicate with readers and audiences? How does silence allow time for contemplation, reflection, and agreement among participants? How is silence related to various intense emotional states? These questions lead us to reflect on previous scholarship which regarded silence in early China as the most spontaneous and natural way to grasp the highest truth, which is unpresentable and inexpressible through articulated speech and artificial language. In this sense, the notion of the unspoken teaching is not only understood in opposition to speech, but also as a means to reveal the deficiency of language and the limits of speech. However, through a survey of dialogues, stories, and arguments in Yanzi chunqiu, I show that silence is explicitly marked and explained within the text, and is used actively, purposefully, and meaningfully, to persuade, inform, and motivate audiences. In other words, silence is anything but natural and spontaneous. Rather, it is intentionally adopted, carefully crafted, and publicly performed to communicate, remonstrate, criticize, reveal, and target certain ideas. That is to say, silence is as argumentative as speech and as arbitrary as language. Finally, an awareness of and sensitivity to silence provides a new perspective to engage with other early Chinese texts.

This paper presents an overview of the authors' recent findings concerned with the rhythmic structures typical of the Chinese text. The proportion of disyllabic and trisyllabic words is shown, disyllabic words or binomials being predominant. The intervals between two strong (full-toned) syllables are found to reproduce the same two-syllable pattern. Chinese is proposed to be classified as a binomial-timed language. With accelerating speech rate, certain syllables tend to loose their inherent full-tone characteristics, thus becoming “weak” or even light (neutral). Since full-toned “strong” syllables are often interpreted as stressed, their “disappearance” under certain conditions seems to be another evidence of superfluity of word-level phonological stress in Chinese.

Through close readings of excavated texts from Guōdian, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the way in which meaning is produced in early Chinese philosophical texts. It is the first book on early China to cast light on the relationship between material conditions and ideas and shows how, in an evolving manuscript culture, texts were used by different social groups.

The practice of physician acupuncture faces unique challenges in its development and inclusion as a recognized medical specialty. Information contained in early Chinese medical texts offers solutions to some of the divides that separate Chinese Medicine from contemporary biomedicine. Recent advances in classical text research—made possible by the establishment of Chinese language databases—provide new hypotheses of disease pathogenesis and new strategies for treating various acute and chronic illnesses. The Vascular Model of Disease Pathogenesis summarizes some theories of early Chinese medicine into language recognizable by modern science. This theory bridges some of the current disparities between ancient and modern practices and offers a new model of human health, illness, and clinical therapeutics.

This study is about the neologism, which were newly included in Xiandai Hanyu cidian(7th edition)[Modern Chinese Dictionary]. It focuses on grasping the recent tendency of Mandarin new words by analyzing the ways of word-formation. The number of total data is 317, which can be classified into several types of words depending on the standards, such as syllable, part of speech, and combination of morphemes. According to the results of the study, various syllabic Mandarin words have been made from 2 syllables to 9 syllables, but still in Mandarin new words, disyllabic words have been formed most actively. Most of the new words are verbs and nouns. It is very interesting that many separable words, which are so called ‘liheci,’ appear in the data. Based on the ways of combing morphemes in words, the data can be divided into 5 types, such as mono-morphemic word, compound, derivative, abbreviation, and phrase. The most of the data are compounds and phrases, and they usually show modifying structures. It is interesting that there is no mono-syllabic word in the mono-morphemic words. Prefixes are used more often than suffixes in the derivatives. Various types of abbreviations such as acronym, blending, and clipping are shown in the data.

Reviewed by: Just War and Pacifism: Chinese and Christian Perspectives in Dialogue Joseph Tse-Hei Lee (bio) Edmund Ryden . Just War and Pacifism: Chinese and Christian Perspectives in Dialogue. Variétés Sinologiques, New Series, 89. Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute, 2001. 181 pp. Hardcover $12.00, ISBN 2-910969-04-5. The wars of the twentieth century and, thus far, of the twenty-first have been "total wars," exhausting huge amounts of resources, killing more civilians than soldiers, and devastating the environment. The question of how to replace violent with nonviolent means of conflict resolution has now become extremely urgent. In Just War and Pacifism, Edmund Ryden, a Jesuit scholar at the Fujen University in Taiwan and author of Philosophy of Peace in Han China (Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute, 1998), takes yet another look at this question. Exploring the issue from philosophical and cross-cultural perspectives, Ryden adds an ethical dimension to the debate about war and peace by challenging the dehumanization of the "enemy" in contemporary political rhetoric (p. 13). He consults a wide range of disciplines on nonviolent means of conflict resolution including history, philosophy, political science, and theology. In many ways, this book presents a thorough critique of the subject within a dialectical framework of just war, pacifism, and nonviolence, and calls for greater commitment to avoid using war as an instrument of international policy (pp. 14-15). [End Page 250] While the preface lays out the book's objectives and methodology, part 1, "Just War," traces the historical development of the "Just War" theory and discusses its conceptual relevance to the contemporary world. There are at least two ways of looking at the "Just War" theory: the pursuit of justice and the avoidance of war. At the center of the debate is the question of how the theory should be used to justify the use of force in domestic and international politics. Chapter 1, "Just War: A Western Perspective," presents a critical review of the "Just War" theory in Europe by examining the writings of Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Alexander of Hales, Vitoria, Suarez, Gonzalez, Gentili, and Grotius. Underlying their writings is the idea that God would approve the use of war to pursue peace and justice. When warfare is perceived as a choice between a greater and a lesser evil, these Catholic thinkers are willing to accept the use of war as a defense against the greater evil. In the West, the "Just War" theory is more than a philosophical idea. It is also an official doctrine in the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church that, as such, can only be declared active by the Pope. The last time this doctrine was used by the Pope was in late July 1995, when John Paul II called for "defensive and proportionate" intervention in Bosnia in "a just war" to defend the civilian population.1 The Pope's remark amounted to sanctioning the actions of the Croatian army prior to the U.S.-supported Croatian military action against the Serbs in Krajina in early August 1995, widely known as "Operation Storm."2 All contemporary wars are framed as a struggle between good and evil. The concept of the "Cold War" was based on the same formula, and right-wing politicians and intellectuals in the West are reluctant to abandon this formula. The current U.S. military campaign in Iraq is justified on the basis of the evil of Saddam Hussein's regime. Chapter 2, "Just War: A Chinese Perspective," explores the notion of yi zhan (just war) in ancient Chinese philosophy. There seem to be considerable parallels between early Chinese and Western philosophical texts on the nature of war, an insight that, in an imperfect world, war can be used as a self-defense against aggression. Of all the Chinese philosophical texts, Ryden focuses on the Huainanzi: On Military Strategy because this text is more restrictive about the use of force in a wartime situation. According to the Huainanzi, the sole purpose of an army is humanitarian intervention, and the army must be disbanded after the end of a military campaign. This corresponds to Machiavelli's view that an army should be prevented from establishing itself...

Thus far, the study of early China and its texts is dominated by originalist approaches that try to excavate the authentic meaning of the classics. In this article, I promote the idea that a shift in focus from the intentions of the authors to the readers’ concrete responses could meaningfully accompany our research on the classics’ “original” meaning. Beyond merely illuminating the cultural and intellectual environments in which the various receptions were produced, such research on the classics’ myriad interpretations could also serve as a postcolonial catalyst, helping us identify field-specific trends and reading strategies that, often unnoticed, impact our understandings of early Chinese texts. In other words, reception history would not only give us insights into the history of early Chinese classics and the variegated worlds they inhabited. It would also help us illuminate and reflect upon the ways we researchers shape and preconfigure our visions of premodern China and its texts.

<p>This research investigates the nature of vocabulary, especially technical vocabulary, in the specialized discipline of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is an important area of higher education. It consists of three linked studies in correspondence to three research aims using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Study 1 addressed the questions of what kinds of words constitute TCM lexis given its origin, and what is the vocabulary load of English-medium texts in this discipline. To answer these questions, a series of lexical analyses was conducted on three corpora: theory-based and practice-based textbook corpora and a journal article corpus, which reflect the main areas of reading for TCM students. The results showed that while high, mid and low-frequency vocabulary make up a fairly large proportion of these texts, other lexical items such as abbreviations, loan words, medical words, proper nouns, and compounds also feature in them, but in differing proportions depending on the text types. Further, this study found that a large vocabulary of 13,000 word families plus four supplementary lists and two TCM-specific lists is needed. This is the point which most TCM learners can read TCM textbooks and journal articles without vocabulary being a handicap. Study 2 looked more closely at the technical vocabulary in TCM. The nature of technical vocabulary was explored and TCM technical word lists of both single and multiword units were developed for learners and teachers in this discipline. A total of 2,778 word types were selected for the TCM technical word list based on the criteria of relative keyness in the TCM Corpora compared to a general written English corpus, meaningfulness, and frequency. The list provided 36.65% coverage of the corpora from which it was developed. In addition, a TCM technical lexical bundle list with 898 bundles was developed to supplement the technical word list. The findings suggested that lexical bundles play an essential role in creating meaning and structure of TCM discourse. Thus, they should be regarded as a basic linguistic construct since some technical vocabulary needs to be seen in bundles rather than in single words. The last study bridged the gap between corpus-based word lists and the actual ESP vocabulary learning context by way of investigating learners’ understanding of the technical words from the technical word list generated from the second study. Results suggested that learners faced different challenges in technical vocabulary learning depending on their linguistic backgrounds. Specifically, Chinese learners had great difficulty with technical words from the lower-frequency bands of BNC/COCA word lists, while Western learners encountered challenges with loan words borrowed from Chinese. As a result, a certain divergence between the Western and Chinese TCM learners’ understanding of technical words was manifested. These findings indicate that a pedagogically useful word list should be adaptable to learners from different linguistic backgrounds. Drawing on these findings, this thesis also provides methodological, theoretical, and pedagogical implications so that the TCM learners can gain better support in their specialized English vocabulary learning. They can also enable the teachers and course designers to better scaffold their students’ vocabulary development.</p>

Rewriting Early Chinese Texts