(1) ‘To signify’ is taken in many senses among logicians. In one sense a sign is said to “signify” something when it supposits, or is apt to supposit, for it — in such a way, that is, that the name is predicated by means of the verb ‘is’ of a pronoun pointing to it. Thus, ‘white’ signifies Socrates. For ‘He is white’ is true, pointing to Socrates. Thus [too], ‘rational’ signifies a man. For ‘He is rational’ is true, pointing to a man. And so on for many other concrete [terms].
(2) ‘To signify’ is taken in another sense when the sign can supposit for the [thing] in some proposition about the past or about the future or about the present, or in some true proposition about a mode. In this sense, ‘white’ not only signifies what is now white, but [also] what can be white. For in the proposition ‘A white1 can run’, taking the subject for what can be, the subject supposits for the [things] that can be white.
(3) Taking ‘to signify’ in the first sense, and [the term] ‘significate’ corresponding to it, an utterance (and even a concept) often falls away from its significate through only a change in the thing. That is, something ceases to be signified that was signified earlier. [But] taking ‘to signify’ in the second sense, and [the term] ‘significate’ corresponding to it, an utterance or concept does not fall away from its significate through only a change in the external thing.
(4) ‘To signify’ is taken in [yet] another sense, when that from which the utterance is imposed is said to be signified, or what is signified in the first sense by a principal concept or a principal utterance.2 In this sense, we say that ‘white’ signifies a whiteness because ‘whiteness’ signifies a whiteness. Nevertheless, the sign ‘white’ does not supposit for this whiteness. So [too], ‘rational’, if it is a difference, signifies the intellective soul.
(5) In another sense, ‘to signify’ is taken most broadly when some sign that is apt to be a part of a proposition, or is apt to be a proposition or expression, conveys something, whether principally or secondarily, whether in the nominative or in an oblique case, whether it gives [one] to understand it, or connotes it, or signifies it in any way whatever, or signifies it affirmatively or negatively. For example, the name ‘blind’ signifies sight, because [it does so] negatively, and the name ‘immaterial’ signifies matter negatively, and the name ‘nothing’ or ‘non-something’ signifies something, but negatively. Anselm talks about this way of signifying in On the Fall of the Devil.3
(6) ‘To signify’, therefore, in one or another signification of [the word], belongs to any universal [term whatever]. For “a universal”, according to Damascene in his Logic, Ch. 48,4 “is what signifies many [things] — for instance, ‘man’, ‘animal’.” For every universal [term] either signifies several [things] in the first sense or the second, because every universal is predicated of several [things], either in an assertoric proposition about the present, or in a proposition about the past or future or a mode.
(7) From this it is clear that those [people] are in error who say that the utterance ‘man’ does not signify all men. For, since the universal ‘man’, according to the above Doctor,5 signifies several [things], and it does not signify several things that are not men, [therefore] it has to signify several men. This is to be granted, because nothing is signified by ‘man’ except a man, and no one man any more than another.
(8) Every universal, therefore, signifies several [things]. But a universal that is a genus or species, which is predicated of a pronoun pointing to some thing, does not signify several [things] except by taking ‘to signify’ in the first sense or the second sense. But the remaining universals signify several [things] in the first sense or the second, and some [things] too in the third sense or the fourth. For every other universal signifies something in the nominative and something in an oblique case. This is clear with ‘rational’ and ‘risible’, and so on.
Translation by Paul Vincent Spade, CC BY 4.0. Source: Indiana University ScholarWorks. Changes: format conversion only (PDF to Markdown; footnotes, italics and paragraph numbers kept; margin line numbers and page headers dropped).
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Footnotes
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That is, a white thing. Latin often uses the neuter forms of adjectives as though they were nouns. ↩
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‘Principal’ here seems to mean something like ‘absolute’. See the examples. ↩
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Anselm, De casu diaboli, Ch. 11. See Jasper Hopkins & Herbert Richardson, trs., Anselm of Canterbury: Truth, Freedom, and Evil. Three Philosophical Dialogues, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), pp. 163–168. ↩
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John Damascene, Dialectica, Ch. 65, PL 94, col. 659A; Latin translation of Robert Grosseteste, Ch. 48, ed. cit., p. 50. ↩
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That is, Damascene, ibid. ↩