Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Peter Abelard and His Contemporaries 95
because there is no straightforward basis for construing them as generating understandings
and denoting as names and verbs do. And yet they clearly play some
kind of semantic role within the proposition.
One approach is to argue, against intuitions, that indefinites signify just as
names and verbs do, and preserve this signification even when taken in isolation
from other words. So what is the isolated meaning of “of”? Since it brings to
mind nothing in particular, some who adopt this approach say that it signifies all
things: “‘Of’ said by itself signifies all things, in that anything is of those things”
[Abelard, 1927, p. 337 (14-15); Abelard, 2006, 02.17]. In other words, anything at
all can be said to be of, because one can always identify a group to which it belongs
and then identify it as being of that group. So the word when taken in isolation
has a specifiable, albeit very broad, signification. When the word is then taken
in context with other words, this universal signification will be limited (reducitur)
and made definite (certificatur) through the presence of a name. In the phrase “of
man,” for example, the word “of” would presumably signify only men [Abelard,
1927, p. 337 (15–16); Abelard, 2006, 02.17].
Against this approach Abelard proposes another, which he prefers, and which
indeed seems more intuitive. He simply denies that indefinites preserve signification
when taken in isolation from other words — and so presumably signify
nothing when said in isolation, as opposed to everything. These words, rather,
are established for the sake of co-signifying alongside other words, and when put
alongside them acquire signification, just as consonants by themselves make no
sound, but acquire sound when uttered alongside vowels [Abelard, 1927, p. 337
(37–40); Abelard, 2006, 02.19]. What Abelard means by indefinite signification,
therefore, seems to be latent signification. This latent signification is realized
by placement of the word in an appropriate context. Now context does not just
render the signification of these words more precise; it does that much already
for names and verbs [Abelard, 1927, pp. 337 (41)–338 (3); Abelard, 2006, 02.20;
Nuchelmans, 1973, pp. 140-141], and must do more for indefinites. On the other
hand context does not simply assign the indefinite the same signification as some
adjoining definite, since that would yield two words that signify exactly the same,
producing a semantic redundancy [Abelard, 1970, p. 119 (20–23)]. Abelard gives
several examples of how the real but latent signification of indefinites emerges by
their use in context — as when we say that something is “of iron,” and mean that
it is made out of iron; this is to say more of the thing than simply to say it is iron.
The presence of the preposition is what makes this difference [Abelard, 1927, p.
338 (24–26); Abelard 2006, 02.24]. 24
By contrast with these indefinite words, names and verbs are both classified as
definites. Their signification is more than latent. It is analysable even with the
words taken in separation. Of the two, names are the simpler case. Abelard’s semantic
account of names is essentially given already in his discussion of universals,
24 Abelard’s account of indefinites is commented on elsewhere: [Nuchelmans, 1973, pp. 140–
142], [D¸ambska, 1977], [Jolivet, 1982, pp. 53–56], [Mews, 1985, pp. 83–84], [de Rijk, 1986, pp.
86-87], [Pinzani, 2003, 65–67], [Rosier-Catach, 2003a, pp. 74–79] and [Wilks, forthcoming].