The Philosophy and Linguistics of Dao : the Ancient Chinese Philosophy and Language

도의 철학과 도의 언어학 -고대 중국의 철학과 언어-

The aim of this paper is to elucidate ancient Chinese philosophy and linguistics through the concept of the Dao. Ancient Chinese thought had developed together with ancient Chinese theories of language and the linguistic features of Classical Chinese. The concept of the Dao served as an intermediary among them. The Dao which ancient Chinese philosophers sought for has several characteristics: ethical normativity, wholeness, dynamicity, non-reducibility. Linguistic studies also revealed them. The following linguistic features of Classical Chinese are the cause and/or the effect of such Dao-based philosophy and linguistics: No explicit subject-predicate sentential structure, no parts of speech, heavy reliance on the word order and context for meaning determination, no explicit distinction between compound words and a sentence, the pictographic or the ideographic features of Chinese graphs, and non-existence of a copula.