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Míng (名) As “Names” Rather Than “Words:” Disabled Bodies Speaking Without Acting In Early Chinese Texts, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

My first scholarly article was about the work of A. C. Graham. Unfortunately, I never met him but my copies of his books became so worn from over-use that I had to replace them. My second, now equally worn, copy of Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Science opens to a statement that inspires my work:

A consistent nominalism has to extend its principle to the particular utterances of the name itself; I pronounce the sound ‘stone’ over X and afterwards convey that Y is like X by pronouncing a similar sound.

This claim has two important implications. First, in early …

Grounding "Language" In The Senses: What The Eyes And Ears Reveal About Ming 名 (Names) In Early Chinese Texts, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Scholarship on early Chinese theories of “language” regularly treats the term ming 名 (name) as the equivalent of “word.” But there is a significant difference between a “word” and a “name.”¹ Moreover, while a “word” is often understood to mean a unit of language that is identifiable in its sameness across speech and writing, there is reason to believe that a ming was mainly used to mean a unit of meaningful sound.² Analyzing the function of ming is a prerequisite for understanding early Chinese theories of “language”—if such a term is even appropriate. Such an analysis will also …