The Chinese "white horse" paradigm

B.Philip Jonsson asked: "i don't get that one. did you ever read the
Chinese "white horse" paradigm?"

In Classical Chinese, yes. A wonderful text, if utter nonsense in translation.

Bai ma fei ma
"A white horse isn't a horse"

where fei is specifically a negative copula, hence the confusion in English.

Fei is a marked verb, a negative copula, where the English "isn't" isn't
really marked. It makes a lot of sense in CC, but it's just "Alice in
Wonderland"-ese in English. And you think this is hard, try translating
poetry instead of linguistic science of the 3d century BCE from Classical
into English. The texts get so hacked up they are utterly unrecognisable. I
read Zhuangzi in Classical Chinese and I didn't recognise a word of it
except when I did a close reading of the same passage!

BB
Brian Betty, Front Desk
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders
http://www.glad.org
Tel. (617) 426-1350