Speculative Grammar and Stoic Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative by Bardzell Jeffrey;

Author:Bardzell, Jeffrey;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Language & Literature
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2008-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

Abelard: Grammar and Signification

If Anselm’s dialogue On Truth is a replication of the essentially Stoic argument laid out at the beginning of Chapter 1, which links proper signification, ethics, and cosmic truth, Abelard posits a theory of language that has the mechanics to perform the role the Stoics assigned to it, simultaneously capturing the disposition of things in reality and our rational comprehension of them. Abelard’s theories tend to reflect predispositions from both the logical and grammatical traditions as they existed in the twelfth century, and these two traditions can be roughly traced back to Aristotle and the Stoics, respectively. Disentangling the two traditions can be helpful both in understanding Abelard’s own theories, which are nuanced and often difficult to understand in their own right, but also in understanding the import of the twelfth-century grammatical tradition in general, which received comparatively little scholarly attention until the latter half of the twentieth century, and which today remains an area about which we could stand to learn much more.13

In developing theories of linguistic reference and signification, both ancient and medieval philosophers wrestle with the problem of how words simultaneously refer to aspects of external reality and the intentions of the speaker. While no one (that I know of) positively rules out that words refer to thought and extramental reality, some theories favor one over the other. For example, Aristotle’s linguistic theory favors words as representing thoughts, while the Stoics tend in the other direction, linking words ultimately to extramental reality. Perhaps as a corollary to these theories, Aristotle and the Stoics also disagree on the origin of words: for Aristotle, words signify conventionally, whereas the Stoics believe that words signify naturally, and they back up this belief with the myth of the primal name-giver, who first imposes names on things, and who does so with more direct, less corrupted access to those things than we moderns do. Within the context of twelfth-century debates on language, perhaps the most pressing disagreement between these two traditions is on the significance of nouns: for the grammar tradition, following Priscian, a noun signifies substance and quality,14 whereas for Aristotle a noun signifies only a quality, namely the intention of the speaker.15

The difference between these two notions of the signification of a noun is far-reaching, not only because it was widely debated,16 but also because it may rest on an underlying difference in theories of metaphysics. How was Priscian’s “substance and quality” formula understood? According to de Rijk, medieval logicians understood substantia to mean an individual thing (res), while qualitas meant the nature, class, or type of thing to which the thing belongs or in which it participates (De Rijk, “Origins” 163). Alternatively, in Fredborg’s words, “nouns signify substance (a what) and quality (an of what kind)” (Fredborg 182, italics in original). Peter King analyzes Priscian’s definitions from both Aristotelian and Stoic perspectives. Concerning how someone following Aristotle might read Priscian, King writes,

[H]ow can a nomen signify things in two categories, namely substance and quality? disjunctively? or

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