SAPOLIADI/Onoma and rhema in the De interpretatione

"3.2. The expression of thought in speech

3.2.1. As we saw in 2.4.3, one of the words that Plato uses for giving verbal expression to what one holds true in one's mind is the verb apophainesthai. This verb, with gnomon or doxan as the expressed or unexpressed object, was familiar to every Greek and had the quite ordinary meaning of making known one's opinion. It is this word that plays a central role in Aristotle's treatment of the expression of thought in speech, at least in De interpretatione. Together with the noun apophansis, it becomes a more or less technical term for the speech act of making known to others what one holds true in one's mind, of asserting that something is the case. This speech act is either an affirmation or a denial: a kataphasis is an apophansis in which it is asserted that one thing belongs to another, an apophasis is an apophansis in which one thing is separated from another (De int. 17 a 25). Both kataphasis and apophasis are species of the genus phasis: they are forms of saying (phanai)that something is or is not the case.

All these nouns suffer from a process-product ambiguity. Sometimes they indicate the activity of making known one's opinion by means of affirming or denying that something is the case. But they may also designate the utterance which is produced in the course of that activity. So an apophansis is defined as a significant spoken sound about whether something does or does not hold (De int. 17 a 23). The two species of the genus phasis, kataphasis and apophasis, are defined as logos kataphatikosand logos apophatikos, as an affirmative or negative utterance (Cat. 12 b 8). Each is a logos apophantikos, an utterance used in the activity of revealing one's thought (De int. 17 a 8).

It is this utterance, as used for a special purpose, that is the typical unit of the legein-level, the Platonic logos. In contrast with other sorts of expressions which do not yet admit of truth or falsity, a kataphasis or apophasis and a logos apophantikos are the kind of units that are rightly called true or false (Cat. 2 a 7; De int. 17 a 3, 20 a 35).

3.2.2. The other sorts of expressions, which do not yet admit of truth or falsity and are for that reason incomplete and defective, are the units of Plato's onomazein-level, the onomata and rhemata. By uttering an onoma or a rhema one cannot reveal anything by one's utterance in such a way as to be making a statement (De int. 17 a 17). This 'not yet'-character of onomata and rhemata is a point to which Aristotle remarkably often returns.

In Cat. 1 a 16 he distinguishes between expressions whose utterance involves a combination (symploke) and expressions that are uttered without combination. As examples are given: 'Man runs', 'Man wins'; 'Man', 'Ox', 'Runs', 'Wins'. The expressions formed without any combination designate something belonging to one of the categories, and none of them is either true or false (Cat. 2 a 8, 13 b 10).

In De int. 16 a 9 a parallel is drawn between the mental sphere and the verbal sphere. In the mental sphere two kinds of thoughts are found, those

unaccompanied by truth or by falsity and those that necessarily have one or the other. In the verbal sphere onomata andrhemata which are pronounced without any addition -- for instance, 'Man', 'White' -- are like thoughts that are formed without any combination; they are not yet true or false. Even a word such as 'Goat-stag' does not yet signify anything true or false. It does so only when 'is' or 'is not' is added.

That the symploke must be of a special kind is shown by De int 16 b 1. When 'is' or 'is not' is added to a genitive or dative case (Philo's' or 'to-Philo), the combination does not yet yield a truth or falsehood. The oblique cases cannot play the role of naming the subject in a statement-making utterance.

Further examples of the 'not yet'-terminology are De int. 16 b 19 and 17 a 9. Verbs uttered by themselves signify something but they do not yet signify whether something is the case or not (Compare De int. 16 b 28: a word like 'Man' signifies something but not that something is the case or is not the case). The definition (logos) of man, without 'is' or 'was' or 'will be' or something of that kind, is not yet a statement-making utterance.

These passages are sufficient proof that Aristotle, probably inspired by Plato, is fully aware of the incomplete and defective character of onomata and rhemata. Measured against the relative independence of utterances by means of which expression is given to a belief that something is the case, and which therefore admit of truth or falsity, the meaning of onomata and rhematais imperfect. A composite unit of the legein-level, which has the complete sense of a true or a false thought, is formed only when the open place accompanying each separate onoma or rhema is occupied by a proper complement.

Aristotle defines onomata and rhemata as spoken sounds significant by convention none of whose parts is significant in separation (De int. 16 a 20, 16 b 6; Poetics 1457 a 10, 14). The difference between the two is that an onoma signifies without any reference to time, whereas a rhema additionally signifies time. Moreover, the rhema is a sign of something said of something else, the subject. The verb legein which Aristotle uses in this connection indicates both the predicative and the assertive function of the rhema; if someone says 'Callias runs', the component 'runs' is a sign that the speaker connects the activity of running with Callias, but also that he holds that this predicate actually belongs to Callias, at the time indicated. As for cases like 'Callias is running' or 'Man is just', where the word 'is' occurs as a third element, there the verb 'is' by itself is nothing, but it additionally signifies some combination (synthesis) which cannot be thought without the components (De int 16 b 25). This synthesis, of which the spoken sounds 'is' or 'is not' are the appropriate sign, is the mental activity of bringing together or separating two concepts which, at the same time, is an act of assenting to the combination, or of dissenting from it. Aristotle does not seem to distinguish between merely conceiving of a certain combination, in a neutral state of mind, and actually accepting or rejecting it; for him a synthesis is always a mental assertion. That the copula 'is' has this assertive force is confirmed by Met. 1017 a 31; although Aristotle speaks there of an emphatic use of Is' and 'is not', in the sense of 'Socrates iseducated, he really is so', there is reason to believe that this emphatic use is only a strengthening of what is normally present in all cases. For in De int. 21 b 31 it is said that in utterances of the form 'Man is white', 'Man is not white' the parts 'is' and 'is not' determine the true; this presumably means that they lend assertive force to these utterances (The passage is, however, far from clear).

De int. 16 b 20 is also interesting because it is in these lines that we find the first trace of a distinction that later came to be known as the distinction between categorematic and syncategorematic words. Although verbs by themselves do not yet signify whether something is the case or not and therefore do not possess the degree of completeness and independence which is characteristic of the units of the legein-level, it is still true that most of them have a meaning of their own in the sense that both the speaker and the hearer, in pronouncing or hearing the word, will have a definite thought in their minds, a thought that has some kind of self-sufficiency. The copula 'is', on the contrary, is not accompanied by any such distinct and relatively self-sufficient thought; it only adds a certain nuance to the meaning of the words to which it is joined. For this additional way of signifying Aristotle uses the word prossemainein. This verb also occurs in De int 20 a 13, in connection with 'every' and 'no'; these words additionally signify nothing other than that the affirmation or negation is about the name taken universally. Thus we have here the beginning of a trichotomy: expressions signifying that something is the case; verbs and nouns, which do not yet signify that something is the case but have some meaning of their own; and words like 'is', 'every', 'no', which do not signify (semainein) in either of those ways but only contribute to the meaning of other words." pp. 26-29

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"3.6. Summary

This chapter clearly shows that the treatment of problems concerning acts and attitudes of holding something true and their objects with which Plato had made a modest but hopeful beginning in Sophist 261-264 was considerably extended and refined by Aristotle's efforts. By way of conclusion I shall give a synopsis of what we have found out about his conception of the bearers of truth and falsity.

In the first place that is true or false which is thought or believed to be the case. This bearer of truth or falsity may be designated by such expressions as doxa, hypolepsis, doxazomenon (doxaston), hypolambanomenon (hypo-lepton), or by a hoti-clause or an accusative and infinitive phrase. In so far as a thought or belief is expressed in words it is perhaps also referred to as the pragma that underlies an affirmation or negation; but Aristotle does not seem to make a clear terminological distinction between the thing believed or asserted and that which is actually the case in reality.

Although it is not denied that logos sometimes stands for that which is asserted, in the contexts that are most relevant to our subject the word usually has the sense of utterance. Utterances that are used to make statements are the second category of bearers of truth and falsity, designated by such expressions as logos apophantikos, logos kataphatikos, logos apophatikos, apophansis, kataphasis, apophasis, and protasis. It is probable that Aristotle in speaking of utterances commonly has in mind what would nowadays be called utterance-tokens. There are, however, some passages in which the bearer of truth or falsity must be taken to be an utterance-type of a certain kind.(*)

As some of the terms for that which is thought or believed and for the utterances used to express it are also employed for the acts or attitudes of judging and believing and for the acts of uttering words with a special intention, the qualifications 'true' and 'false' can easily come to be applied to those acts and attitudes as well. Such cases are, however, exceptional and at any rate derivative." pp. 43-44

Notes

(*) For the problem of the so-called future contingencies see Dorothea Frede, Aristoteles and die 'Seeschlacht. Das Problem der Contingentia Futura in De interpretatione 9, Gottingen, 1970.

From: Gabriel Nuchelmans, Theories of Proposition. Ancient and Medieval Conceptions of the Bearers of Truth and Falsity.Amsterdam: North-Holland 1973.