 Other problems concerned the semantics of compound terms, or phrases. The simplest early Chinese model of language—probably the default starting point for the Mohists’ and other ancient Chinese thinkers’ reflections—is what we might call the one-name-one-thing model (cf. Hansen 1983). On this view, names or words (míng 名) are taken to stand in a one-to-one correspondence with kinds of shí 實 (stuff, things, events, situations). When the Mohists moved on to consider phrases or expressions (cí 辭) formed by combining two or more words, they discovered that the language-world relation is more complex than this naive model suggests. Linguistic structure does not always directly reflect the structure of things in the world. When two names are strung together, the reference of the resulting phrase may change in unpredictable ways. Combining ‘oxen’ and ‘horses’ gives ‘oxen-and-horses’ (niú mǎ 牛馬), a phrase denoting the sum of all oxen and horses (B12). But combining ‘hard’ and ‘white’ does not produce a phrase denoting the sum of all hard things and white things. It forms one denoting things that are both hard and white in the same place at the same time (A66, B37). Everything hard-and-white (jiān bái 堅白) is white. But not everything falling within the extension of ‘oxen-and-horses’ is oxen. In fact, a dispute over whether oxen-and-horses are oxen or not is undecidable, since if we claim that they are, on the grounds that part of the sum is oxen, our opponent can claim in response that they are not, on exactly parallel grounds (B67) (Fraser 2007b). ‘White horse’ and ‘blind horse’ have the same grammatical structure. But whereas a white horse is white all over, a blind horse is not “blind all over”; only its eyes are blind (B3). Deeming someone “fū 夫” (husband) but combining the word with ‘yóng 勇’ (brave) to form the phrase ‘yóng fū 勇夫’ (“brave man”) is not deeming him a husband. But deeming a pair of things “shoes” while combining the word with ‘buying clothes’ (“buying clothes and shoes”) is still deeming them shoes (B3). 