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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Emergence of Word-Meaning in Early China: Normative Models for Words

The Emergence of Word-Meaning in Early China: Normative Models for Words

Geaney, Jane

Hardcover

Series: Suny Chinese Philosophy and Culture

PhilosophyChinese HistoryGeneral Eastern Religions

ISBN10: 1438488939
ISBN13: 9781438488936
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: Jul 1 2022
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.58
Height: 0.69 Width: 7.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English

Posits the origin of a specifically Chinese concept of word-meaning, and sheds new light on the linguistic ideas in early Chinese philosophical texts.

The Emergence of Word-Meaning in Early China makes an innovative contribution to studies of language by historicizing the Chinese notion that words have meaning (content independent of instances of use). Rather than presuming that the concept of word-meaning had always existed, Jane Geaney explains how and why it arose in China. To account for why a normative term (yi, duty, morality, appropriateness) came to be used for meanings found in dictionaries, Geaney examines interrelated patterns of word usage threading through and across a wide range of genres. These patterns show that by the first millennium, as textual production exploded-and as radically different writing forms (in Buddhist sutras) were encountered-yi already functioned as an externally accessible model for semantic interpretation of texts and sayings.

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