From the Tree to the Labyrinth (35 page)

He leaves us no choice, then, but to attribute to him the classification shown in
Figure 4.1
.

Figure 4.1

Except that at this point Augustine realizes that he has gone too far, and in his final paragraph he corrects himself, leaving in suspense the question as to whether the call of the dove or the groans of the sick are truly to be considered phenomena of signification. If it were not for this correction, the “language” of the dove would have been firmly situated alongside the words of Holy Scripture. And since it is the latter that he is concerned with, he chooses to shelve the other issue for the time being.

One solution to the riddle of the dove will make its appearance (albeit somewhat problematically) with Abelard. In his
Dialectica
(I, iii, 1), the classification he espouses (which in any case does not depart from the Augustinian distinction) can be reduced to the Aristotelian-Boethian model (to be discussed later): meaningful
voces
may be divided into those than are meaningful
naturaliter
and those whose meaning proceeds
ex impositione
or
ad placitum
(“by convention”); and among the natural utterances he cites the barking of the dog (as an expression of anger).
²³

But in his
Ingredientibus,
another opposition is associated with that between
naturaliter
and
ex impositione,
namely, that between
significativa
and
significantia.
²⁴

In order for a word to be
significativa
it must be an
institutio.
This
institutio
is not a convention (like the
impositio
); instead it is a decision that lies behind both the
impositio
and the natural
significativeness,
and could come very close to intentionality. Words signify in fact by means of the institution of human will, which orders them
ad intellectum constituere,
that is, to produce concepts. Seeing that by his day the barking of the dog must have become a canonical citation, Abelard declares that it is significant of anger and pain, just like a human expression designed to communicate something, because it is instituted by nature, in other words by God, to express this meaning. Thus, the bark can be distinguished from those phenomena that are merely
significantia,
that is, symptomatic, such as, for example, that same bark that, heard from a distance, allows us merely to conclude that there is a dog somewhere over yonder.

If a man, then, hears a bark and infers that there is a dog present, this is a symptom being used, by inference, to draw a signification, but the fact that it becomes significant does not imply that it has been instituted as significative. On the other hand, when the dog barks, it does so to express a specific concept (anger or pain or rejoicing), in other words, in order to
constituere intellectum
(produce concepts) in our minds. Abelard does not say that the dog does so of its own free will: the dog is acted upon by another will, belonging to the natural order (a sort, we might say, of
agent will
).
²⁵
But it is still an intentional agent. Abelard is quite clear: a thing is significative because of the act of will that produces it as such, not because of the fact that it produces meanings.

Accordingly, Abelard’s taxonomy should be translated as in
Figure 4.2
.

Figure 4.2

Apropos of which, it could be said that where there is
institutio,
there is some form of code, a correspondence (natural or conventional) between
signans
and
signatum,
which cannot be simply a matter of conjecture. But the
voces significantes
remain a matter for conjecture and therefore inference, and in this sense Abelard sticks to the Stoic distinction that distinguishes between speech act and index or cue.

This distinction, however, is not so evident in the semiotics clearly derived from Aristotle. Now, if we are to appreciate most of the discussions that follow, we must take as our point of departure, as the Middle Ages did,
De interpretatione
16a, where, with the purpose of defining nouns and verbs, Aristotle makes a number of statements about signs in general. Let me attempt a
translatio media,
which, while taking into account our current versions, endeavors above all to give an account of those aspects that particularly struck the translators and interpreters of the Middle Ages:

The sounds of the voice
(ta en te phone)
are symbols
(symbola)
of the affections
(pathematon)
of the soul, just as the letters of the alphabet
(grammata)
are symbols of the things that are in the voice
(en te phone).
And as the letters of the alphabet are not the same for all men, in the same way neither are the sounds. Nevertheless, sounds and letters are basically signs
(semeia)
of the affections of the soul, which are the same for everyone, and likewise things
(pragmata),
of which the affections of the soul are similar images
(omoiomata),
are the same for everyone. (16a, 1–10)

A name is a sound endowed with meaning
(phone semantike)
by convention
(kata syntheken).
(16a, 20–21)

Lo Piparo (2003) has proposed a radically different interpretation of this passage,
²⁶
but in the present instance we are concerned, not with the philological exegesis of Aristotle, but with seeing how the Middle Ages read this text; and the current interpretation was that what we have on the one hand are things, which impress their images upon the soul (which constitutes their
species
), while on the other we have the linguistic symbols (sonorous and graphemic) that refer to the affections of the soul, or mental images,
ad placitum.
But, if this is how the text is to be understood, we ought to draw another conclusion from it: that sounds and letters (independently of their meaning) are also indices
(semeia)
of the affections of the soul. An idea that may appear banal in itself (like saying that if someone speaks it is because they have something in their heads that they want to say), but which becomes less banal when we see the advantage that Thomas derives from it indirectly, when he lets it be understood that we do not recognize that man is a rational animal through direct knowledge of his essence, but because he manifests his rationality though language.

Boethius’s Latin translation, upon which medieval thinkers will base themselves, runs as follows (my emphasis):

Sunt ergo ea quae sunt in voce, earum quae sunt in anima passionum
notae;
et ea quae scribuntur, eorum quae sunt in voce. Et quemadmodum nec litterae omnibus eaedem, sic nec eaedem voces; quorum autem hae primorum
notae
sunt, eaedem omnibus passiones animae sunt; et quorum hae similitudines, res etiam eaedem.…

Nomen ergo est vox significativa secundum placitum sine tempore, cuius pars est significativa separata … Secundum placitum vero, quoniam naturaliter nominum nihil est, sed quando fit
nota;
nam designant et inlitterati soni, ut ferarum, quorum nihil est nomen.
²⁷

Boethius, then, translates with the same word,
nota,
both of the Aristotelian terms,
symbolon
and
semeion.
What Aristotle meant to say was that the twofold relationship word/concept and letters of the alphabet/words is symbolic, or, as the Middle Ages will interpret it, is based on convention (and for this reason varies from one language to another), whereas the relationship between concept and thing is iconic.

But if we translate
semeion
with
nota,
and understand it to mean “sign” in the contemporary meaning of the word (the sense in which we also speak of a linguistic sign), what Aristotle appears to be saying is that words are symbols
and
signs of concepts, and that consequently the two terms are synonyms. In addition to leaving in abeyance the idea, previously referred to, that Aristotle was saying that the fact that words are spoken is an
index, proof,
or
symptom
of the fact that concepts exist in the mind of the speaker, it also leaves in abeyance the whole universe of indiciary signs, and in this sense it poses a number of serious problems that we will come to grips with in due time.

For the moment let us consider a telling example. When Aristotle says, in
De interpretatione
(16a 19–20, 26–29)—this at least was the way he was read in the Middle Ages—that a name is a
vox significativa
by convention, and that no sound is a name for natural reasons but is such only when it
becomes,
by convention, a symbol, he adds that inarticulate sounds, like those made by the beasts,
manifest (delousi)
something, though none of them is a name.

Aristotle does not say that the sounds made by the beasts signify or designate something, he says they manifest it, as a symptom makes manifest its cause. But the Middle Ages, as we shall see, has no trouble translating the Greek
delousi
with the Latin
significant.
Boethius’s translation, by rendering symbol and index with the same term
nota,
obliterated the distinction and favored their identification.
²⁸
But the Middle Ages will have no problem interpreting the sounds made by animals as
voces significativae,
even though not the same as
nomina
(and various commentators explain that in such cases Aristotle is not talking about
voces
but about
soni,
because not all animals, on account of the structure of their phonatory organs, can utter
voces,
and many simply produce sounds).
²⁹

The barking of the dog, which means that the dog is angry, appears in Boethius as an example of a
vox significativa,
though not
ad placitum,
but
naturaliter:
“canum latratus iram significat canum”—and, by the same token,
voces naturaliter significativae
are also the moans of the sick.
³⁰

And so, under the genus
voces significativae
we find a species that according to Aristotle should have belonged among the
semeia.
In this category, Boethius and those who follow him lump together, along with the barking of the dog, the
gemitus infirmorum,
the whinny of the horse and the sounds made by those animals that have no
vox
but have “tantum sonitu quodam concrepant.”
³¹

Boethius assuredly understands that these
voces
signify
naturaliter,
because they evidently reveal their cause according to the (symptomatic) model of inference, but, having obfuscated the distinction between the doctrine of indices and the doctrine of names, he neglects an important fact: that natural sounds do not have an emitter, unless, as sometimes occurs in certain processes of divination, they are interpreted
as if
they had been emitted intentionally by a supernatural agent. The moaning of the sick and the barking of the dog, however, have an emitter, though we are not in a position to affirm that the emission was deliberate. But Boethius also singles out the whinny of the horse: “hinnitus quoque equorum sepe alterius equi consuetudinem quaerit,”
³²
when the horse whinnies to call another horse, and hence whinnies with a definite intention. In fact, in the same passage, Boethius says that “ferarum quoque mutorum animalium voces interdum aliqua significatione praeditas esse perspicimus.” We are dealing, then, with
voces
endowed with some meaning. But endowed by whom (before the advent of Abelard’s idea of an “active will”)? By the beast emitting them or by the human hearing them?