On the Logical Problem of the "Noun-verb Inclusion" Hypothesis

This paper discusses the problems with the "noun-verb inclusion" hypothesis from the logical perspective.Based on the fundamental attributes of logical axiom, the author reveals the logical problems with the "noun-verb inclusion" Venn diagram in terms of the logical syllogism.The distinctions of different word classes can be made in terms of different set of features, including the morphological feature set in the narrow sense, syntactic constituent matching feature set, and the syntactic distribution feature set.The study shows that word class distinctions in Chinese as an isolating language can only be made according to the syntactic distribution feature set.The noun-verb inclusion hypothesis has made a mistake that the mean term in logical syllogism is not inclusive twice.In terms of the genus and species relationship (hyponymy), the noun-verb inclusion fails to meet the requirement that all the features of genus must be included in those of species.