| Mohism, influential in the Warring States Periods, together with Confucianism, come to be known as Famous School. Since reform and opening to the outside world, the Mohist study has come into a new step of progress with prosperous research findings in the area of academic research. Mohism is affluent in semantic thinking, which is worth of deep research. This article, according to scientific perspective of development, in the view of modern semantics, extracts the Mohist semantic thoughts from the book named Mo Ti which is the particular linguistic data of ancient China and the search results related to Mohism, then makes analysis, comparison and conclusion with modern semantic idea and method to form a fairly systematic Mohist semantics.Mohism considers that Ming is used to reflect the referent object and its essential feature. Between Ming and Shi, there is a relation named Jv. All of these three form the Semantic Triangle. Ming refers to the referent (that is Shi) and its feature we mention about, in order to make the object and its feature exist in our mind in the form of thought (that is Jv). Mohism points out that Ming and Yan (that is language), composed of Ming, come into being in the process of practicing of human beings in which human's cognitive ability plays an important role. Semantics is the linguistic expression of experiences that human beings achieve in practicing. Consequently, Mohism expounds in detail on the condition and manner of experience, and restricts definitely the criterion of verifying language. Moreover, Mohism also analyses explicitly the truth condition, expounds in detail on the restriction between them, and discusses thoroughly about the errors of Bei.By finding out the similarity with modern semantics from Mohism, we can set up the Chinese semantic theory based on the western one. The existing research result, however, only sticks about the explanation of Mohist semantics in some aspect, without a whole construction of Mohist semantics. As Mohiststudy is going deeper and deeper nowadays, the study on developing Mohist semantics is good to carry forward Mohism and the Advanced Culture of the Chinese Nation and widen the area of semantic study, moreover, it is good to the international academic exchange and research, which makes it be of rather great significance in theory as well as in reality. |
