Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Development of Supposition Theory in the Later 12 th through 14 th Centuries 209
The first is true because someone who was a virgin sometime in the past was
pregnant sometime in the past. Etc.
5.2.5 Tenses with relative clauses
We have not yet said how to handle complex terms with relative clauses occurring
in tensed sentences. If we follow our instructions so far, we end up with an
ampliated complex term, but with no account of how the complex term is to be
ampliated in terms of how its parts work. In the case of modification by a relative
clause there is a very simple treatment. We just suppose that ampliating a
complex term made with a relative clause ampliates only the simple term that is
modified by the relative clause. The relative clause itself is already taken care of,
since it has a verb of its own, and the tense on that verb takes care of ampliating
the terms in it. This I think is how the medieval theory was intended to work. An
example is the following sentence. It has a main verb in the past tense, and its
subject term contains a relative clause in the future tense.
A donkey which will be grey was brown
This is true iff some present or past donkey which will be grey in the future was
brown at some time in the past. This seems to me to reflect our own usage.
There remains a question about the coordination (or lack thereof) of times
within the complex phrase. Consider:
A bishop which was grey was running
This sentence is true according to the present account iff there is some present
or past time at which someone was a bishop, and some past time at which that
person was grey, and some past time at which that person was running. It is not
required that the times of being a bishop and being grey are the same. This may,
arguably, be one correct reading of the sentence.
5.2.6 Parasitic Terms — Genitives
In section 2, we were able to include transitive verbs and genitive constructions
by introducing parasitic terms — terms that within modern theorizing contain a
variable that may be bound by another denoting phrase with the appropriate case.
The meaning of a term such as ‘donkey-of-x’ is something like ‘donkey possessed
by x’. The time of possession is as relevant to the construction as the time of
being a donkey. I am not aware of discussions of this issue.
5.2.7 Coordination of times among parts of the subject or predicate
In parts of the subject or predicate which are disjoint terms Buridan says they
must all be treated as simultaneous. [SD:Soph 3.1 (887)] An example is I ate an
apple in Paris, where, he says, there must be some time in the past such that I
was in Paris then, and I ate something then, and it was an apple then. This is