Abstract：Language is a symbolic system that combines sound and meaning, from the perspective of linguistic philosophy, the problems of sound and meaning that the ancient Chinese philosophers contemplated and the problems of names and reality are both within the scope of philosophical epistemology. “Sound” and “meaning” are components of “names”. The linguistic symbols that combine sound and meaning are the material substance for constructing “names”, which have stronger tool-like characteristics, and the speculative attributes of the sound and meaning problem are weaker than those of the name and reality problem. The ancient Chinese philosophers used the sound and meaning relationship of the Chinese language to explore the world and produce information. The “sound and meaning view” and the “name and reality view” of the ancient Chinese philosophers both played a role in the intellectual enlightenment of ancient Chinese linguistic studies. The sound and meaning view gave birth to ancient Chinese phonetics and semantics, while the name and reality view gave birth to ancient Chinese lexicography. The emergence of the “sound and meaning view” and the “name and reality view” of the ancient Chinese philosophers had a common social and political background, but their main contents had obvious differences.
2025, Vol. 42 
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