Sinologists have long noted Greek philosophy’s intensive focus on abstract theories and concepts, in contrast to Chinese philosophy’s pragmatic, humanist emphasis and relative indifference to abstract entities. The question naturally arose: Did language differences play a role in shaping the distinctive philosophies of China and the West? A list of writers who have dealt with this issue reads like a Who’s Who of twentieth-century sinology, including Joseph Needham (The Shorter Science and Civilization in China, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1978); Derk Bodde (Chinese Thought, Society, and Science, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1991), Graham (Disputers of the Tao, Open Court Press, La Salle, 1989), and many others. In recent decades psycholinguistics research has found differences in how abstraction is acquired and processed in the two languages, with regards to nominalization, generics, and abstract nouns (see Li & Yang, Journal of Literature and Art Studies, 10(9), pp. 835–847, 2020; Tardif et al., 2011; Mou, Philosophy East and West, 49(1), pp. 45–62, 1999), and Bloom (The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, 1981). This paper focuses on the expression of generic entities in English and Chinese, with particular emphasis on the psycholinguistic implications of overt grammatical markers. The focus is on both classical Chinese and modern Mandarin, as the theoretical considerations overlap considerably. The paper addresses questions such as: Are the abstract entities encoded in singular-plural and nominalization functions cognitive universals? To what extent to grammatical markers play a role in acquiring and processing abstract concepts?