A Linguistic-Philosophical Investigation Into The "X+?" Descriptions In Modern Chinese

“Some parts of language we call‘names',but is everything in language a name?”This is an essential question Colin McGinn asked in the very beginning of his Philosophy of Language in the year 2015.Wittgenstein states in his Philosophical Investigation that not all expressions are names.According to Chen Jiaying's discussion in a paper named“On Name”in 1995:“Name”is a class of words,words are not all names,in addition,there are also“concepts”,“definite descriptions”and so on.Looking at the expressions which are all“x+?”constructions,we can see that some of them can be classified into the category of‘name',such as proper names:“??”and“??”(proper name is description in Russellian sense);some of them are descriptions which can also be called‘name',such as“??”and“??”;among the descriptions,some of them cannot be called‘name',e.g.“??”,“??”and“??”;but some of the descriptions can be divided into‘name'category when proper conditions are specified,such as“??”and“??”;unfortunately,expressions like“??”,“??”and“??”are not‘name'at all.There comes a question:some expressions which are all descriptions,how could some of them belong to the‘name'class,whereas some of them do not possess this property?Different categories of descriptions and their respective descriptive capacity and referential conditions will be discussed in this thesis.This thesis will first search for all the “X+?” expressions in modern Chinese,which excludes the ancient Chinese and dialects for the convenience of study.According to the part of speech of X,we distinguish “X+?” expressions into three categories.“noun+?” category,“verb+?” category,“other+?” category.The third category consists in “adjective+ ? ”,“adverb+ ? ”,“quantifier+ ? ” for their small amount.According to Russell's analysis on description in 1919,we know that description is the one whose meaning is made up of the meaning of its constitute parts,and it is noun.In this sense,no matter the part of speech of x,constructions which coincide with the definite of description are the research object of this thesis,in addition,research objects also include referential description in Donnellan's system,that is,meaning-referent is determined and has nothing to do with the meaning of the constitute parts.Thus,although the research objects are confined in a certain field,their descriptive capacity and referent are different in a certain degree.In this thesis,we will find out the grammatical conditions of description and show the various degree of descriptive capacity of descriptions when belong to different philosophical category;at the same time,we will point out the different referential conditions of “x+ ? ”descriptions in the tree categories;finally,we will discuss the correlation between the nameness of “x+?” expressions and their possibility of being subject in a proposition.After the analysis of data,when x is noun,the proportion of description in“x+?”construction is the biggest,and the proportion of description in“x+?”construction decreases progressively from category one to category three;based on descriptive theory of name and theory of proper name,we find that the descriptive capacity of description in Russell's system and Donnellan's system has large difference,for instance,the description capacity of“??”is smaller than“??”,whereas“??”is the smallest.At the same time,referentiality of descriptions in Russell's system are various.Some descriptions have semantic referent,like“??”and“??”,whereas definite description must be in certain context or provide indexicality,can they have their corresponding referent,such as“??”and“??”.All descriptions in Donnellan's system have semantic referent although the descriptive capacity of the description is the smallest.In the end,we find that the capacity of being subject of“x+?”description is as figure 3 shows:proper name,description and non-description,their capacity of being subject in proposition is decreasing progressively.Russell makes it clear in his Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits that our everyday language is misleading in logic.This thesis will be a good example for the understanding of “x+?” expressions,and a significant guidance for the accuracy of E—C translation.