Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Peter Abelard and His Contemporaries 151
of the kind it denotes, as opposed to just present ones [de Rijk, 1967a, p. 495]. In
each of these cases translatio takes place (or, as the text puts it, transsumptio),
whereby the reference of the term is deflected by the adjoining words, even though
the term itself sees no change of underlying signification. What is described here,
of course, is the very semantic behaviour which later supposition theorists attempt
to chart in their various classifications. The supposition of a name is what it stands
for in a given context, and the above varieties of univocation just correspond to
different things a name can stand for in different contexts — i.e., they correspond
to different kinds of supposition.
The forward-looking developments in semantic theory described under (i) and
(ii) were not limited to the two schools mentioned. These were very general developments
in this era, and credit for them must be widely apportioned. While
it is useful to grasp the issues on which the schools differentiated themselves, it
should also be understood that there were issues on which they exerted a productive
consensus. It does remain difficult to chart this mid- and late-twelfth century
period in the history of logic, because essential development occurred through a
larger number of smaller voices, as opposed to a smaller number of larger ones.
The passage from Abelard to the terminists is an inland delta phase of history,
where a distinct channel divides into a network of smaller ones, before these then
gather back into another distinct one.