Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.7, 2017

 

An Exploration of Pre-Qin Linguistic Philosophy

(Abstract)

 

Zhou Jianshe

 

Theories of language origin in pre-Qin linguistic philosophy focus on the cognitive process and on exploring the pathways of language formation, revealing the subject—object relations of reflecting and being reflected, the sense organ—content relations of perception and being perceived, and the society—language relations of constraining and being constrained. Pre-Qin referential theory expounds the relations between linguistic symbols and the objects they represent, with a discussion of the relation between objects, names and reference that reflects the logical relationships of the objective world, linguistic symbols and linguistic contents and reveals the isomorphism of language and the world. The philosophy’s “categorical theory” deals with the cognitive arrangement of categories of linguistic symbols, indicating the need for language users to be conscious of the nature, scope, relations, reality and social effects of things as well as the functional social content reflected in language; its language “pragmatics” explores language’s practical value, principles and methods of use along the three dimensions of symbols and consciousness, symbols and contents, and symbols and expression in studying such principles as compliance with mind, description of reality, and accuracy of referents; and its “hermeneutics” discusses the identification of the semantic information contained within symbols, advocating the understanding of language in terms of cognitive attributes, analytical structure, the ordering of definitions, demonstration of equivalence, ascertaining of truth values, etc.