There are in fact two questions to be discussed. Is the importance of a philosophical thesis relative to language? Is the validity of a philosophical thesis relative to language? The answer to both questions is "yes." It can be shown that two well-known philosophical theses--the logical distinction between numerals and adjectives drawn by Frege, and the distinction between tasks and achievements drawn by Ryle--are true but trivial when stated in Chinese. This is the program for the first part of this (...) paper. In the second part, I will try to show that Mrs. Daitz's statement "a sentence states, but its parts cannot state" and Strawson's grammatical criterion for the subject-predicate distinction are both invalidated by Chinese grammar. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show that the Shianbei word for ‘paper’ was *qaɣVdu, which is cognate to Written Mongolian qaɣudasu ‘tree bark, sheet of paper’, and that *qaɣVdu was subsequently borrowed into other languages as Sogdian kāγaδā, Persian kaġad, kaġid, Old Turkic qaɣat/qaɣaz and Turkish kâğĭd. The etymology of Greek Séres “China” is also discussed.