13th century semantics between terminism and modernism

Abstract

thirteenth-century semantics is characterized by a double opposition: first of all that between the terminist and the modistic approaches, which will be the specific object of this contribution; secondly, that – internal to the first approach – between ‘English’ (or ‘Oxonian’) current and ‘continental’ (or ‘Parisian’) current, which shares several basic options with the modistic approach. in this contribution, after having mentioned very briefly the precedents (that is the Aristotelian-boethian semantics and the grammatical semantics of Donatus and Priscian), the focus will be on the different ways of dealing with signification from a grammatical and a logical point of view, on the theory of suppositio, as the ultimate expression of terminism, and on the rupture determined by the success of the modistic paradigm at the Faculty of Arts in Paris (and bologna), starting from the 1270s of the thirteenth century.