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In Francesco Berto's words, the term "Serious Actualism" is used for the position "that any object must exist in every circumstance in which it has any property – the thesis that predication, or the having of properties as such, entails existence." ("Modal Meinongianism and Fiction: The Best of Three Worlds", Philosophical Studies 152, 2011, 324f.) Berto agrees with Nathan Salmon that Serious Actualism is "a confused and misguided prejudice" (Salmon, "Nonexistence", Noûs 32, 1998, 290). The aim of this article is to defend the doctrine of Serious Actualism against this verdict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Categories , predicates can be 'said of' their subjects or they can be 'present in' their subjects. The said-of relation has received relatively little scholarly attention, and scholars disagree on the answers to four foundational questions about the relation. (i) What is it? (ii) Is it an essential relation? (iii) How is it related to predication? (iv) Is it primitive? I argue that A is said-of B just in case A is a formal part of B. On this account, said-of is an essential relation and it is definable, but it is not defined in terms of predication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article explores the motivations that led Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 1502) to draw the distinction between what he called "primary predication" (ḥaml awwalī) and "familiar predication" (ḥaml mutaʿāraf or ḥaml shāʾiʿ). These motivations include allowing for the predication of particulars, such as "This is Zayd" and accounting for apparently true self-negations, such as "The [concept] particular is not a particular." The article also explores some criticisms of this distinction by Dawānī's contemporary and rival Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 1498). Despite these criticisms, Dawānī's distinction was adopted, adapted, and emphasized by the Safavid scholar Mīr Dāmād (d. 1631). Mīr Dāmād's influence, in turn, accounts for the prominence given to the distinction in later centuries among Iranian and Indo-Muslim logicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Prior Analytics 1.27–30, Aristotle develops a method for finding deductions. He claims that, given a complete collection of facts in a science, this method allows us to identify all demonstrations and indemonstrable principles in that science (1.30, 46a21–7). This claim has been questioned by commentators. I argue that the claim is justified by the theory of natural predication presented in Posterior Analytics 1.19–22. According to this theory, natural predication is a non-extensional relation between universals that provides the metaphysical basis for demonstrative science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article is a reconstruction of a logical dispute concerning the analysis of existential propositions between the two rivals from Shiraz, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 1502) and Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 1498), a dispute that continued to echo down to the nineteenth century, especially in Iran and the Indian subcontinent. The controversy was elicited by a passage from a discussion in the commentary by Qūshjī (d. 1474) on Ṭūsī's Tajrīd in which Qūshjī had briefly suggested that perhaps the predicates "existent" (mawjūd) and "nonexistent" (maʿdūm) are unusual in not needing a copula to link them to the subject. Dashtakī thought that a copula is needed in both existential and non-existential predications, but that in existential predications the copula is simply the union of subject and predicate, whereas in non-existential predications there is an additional copula that signifies the existence or nonexistence of the predicate for the subject. Dawānī's position was that existential and non-existential predications are exactly on a par and should both be analyzed into subject, copula and predicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates aspects of adjectival modification in Romance and Greek of Southern Italy. In Italiot Greek, prenominal adjectives obey restrictions that do not exist in Standard Modern Greek, where all types of adjectives are allowed in prenominal position. As far as postnominal adjectives are concerned, in the textual tradition of Calabria Greek there is evidence of postnominal adjectives systematically articulated in definite nominal structures (henceforth DP s), in a structure similar to the so-called polydefinite construction that is typical of Standard Modern Greek (and of Greek in general since ancient times). Some residual evidence of such a construction is also found in Salento. Yet, in the varieties currently spoken in the two areas, postnominal adjectives are never articulated. The paper explores these patterns, with particular attention to the mechanisms potentially responsible for the loss of polydefiniteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In De Anima 1.4, Aristotle asks whether the soul can be moved by its own affections. His conclusion--that to say the soul grows angry is like saying that it weaves and builds-- has traditionally been read on the assumption that it is false to credit the soul with weaving and building; I argue that Aristotle's analysis of psychological motions implies his belief that the soul does in fact weave and build. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pseudo-Platonic Definitions seems to ascribe to ὄνομα, 'name', the function of signifying two kinds of predicate. This is problematic, and I propose an emendation of the text, arguing that a definition of ῥῆμα, 'verb', has fallen out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boethius identifies beings that are in a subject with what the Scholastics called predicamental accident, and predication by accident with the predication of what is in a subject. The first of these questionable assimilations went on to become terminology commonly accepted by Scholastics of all eras. On the other hand, the second, which seems quite consistent with the thinking of Aristotle, was only admitted with many reservations, probably because of the bewildering claims of Aristotle in Cat. 5, 2a27-34 about the predication of what is in the subject. In what follows I will try to show how these phrases, properly understood, are consistent with the idea that what is in the subject is said by accident of the substance, although they implicate a difficulty poorly resolved by Boethius himself and those who followed him on this point, of whom I will only mention by way of example some Scholastics from the 16th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an interpretation of Anselm of Canterbury's semantic doctrines in De Grammatico, paying special attention to five distinctions present in the dialogue: dicitur in eo quod quale/dicitur in eo quod quid, esse ut in subiecto/esse non ut in subiecto, significare/appellare, significare ut unum/significare non ut unum and significare per se/ significare per aliud. It elucidates the theoretical role of these distinctions, showing that they are introduced with different purposes and that conflation between them must be avoided. Three specific features of this interpretation are the following: (i) an analysis of the distinction between significare and appellare in relation to the orders of intellection and predication, (ii) an account of the difference between predication in eo quod quid/in eo quod quale and essential and accidental predication, and (iii) an analysis of the thesis that 'grammaticus' not only signifies per se qualitas, but also per se habere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I offer an explanation of why the fallacy of "accident" is so called. By 'accident' here, Aristotle does not mean accidental predication but being per accidens. Understood in this way, the fallacy of accident can be analyzed in terms of the rules that Aristotle gives for being per accidens. The fallacy of accident lost the original justification for its name in the late Greek period. It became associated with accidental predication and not with being per accidens. The fallacy was then solved by construing it syllogistically so that the paralogisms became invalid through not having a universal major premise. This medieval analysis became the dominant approach in the medieval period but has led to confusion over the fallacy of accident in millennia of logic books. I end by considering how to formulate the fallacy of accident more fruitfully in modern terms via Aristotle's original approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with a class of non-canonical construct state nominals, whose annex is non-nominal. More specifically, it examines the properties these non-canonical constructs share with canonical construct state nominals, including the absence of overt definiteness marking on the head noun. Non-canonical construct state nominals also differ from canonical construct states in imposing a restriction on the categorial nature of the annex. I argue that a predication structure (Den Dikken 2006, Ouhalla 2011) underlies non-canonical constructs, where the annex is the subject of predication and the head, a 'minimal np', is the predicate, which raises over its subject. This analysis, which seems to invert the expected subject-predicate relation within construct states, is shown to account for a number of new observations related to the structural properties of non-canonical constructs. Non-canonical construct states alternate with constructions where the head noun does not appear in construct form and can take the definite marker. I argue that those alternate constructions are in fact derived from a different initial predication structure, where the head noun is in fact the subject of predication. Being a 'minimal np', the head of non-canonical constructs cannot bear definiteness marking, under the assumption that the definite article is the overt expression of D[Def], Therefore, the account for the distribution of overt definite marking is reduced to whether the outer D dominating the whole construct state is overtly expressed. I argue that a definite outer D is not expressed in non-canonical construct states due to the Doubly-filled Comp Filter (dfcf) generalized to specifier-head configurations, as in Koopman (2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to describe (a) the distribution, (b) the semantic interpretation and (c) the semantic and syntactic derivation of verb-initial versus subject-initial clauses in Creek. Concerning (a), it is argued that the verb-initial and the subject-initial word orders are in complementary distribution. A particular numeration can be assembled in only one way, i.e. as a verb-initial or as a subject-initial word order. The properties of the numeration that play a role in determining the word order for that numeration include the syntactic type of the predicate, the presence or not of non-arguments, the presence or not of sentential operators, and the mode of presenting information. Concerning (b), it is proposed that the semantic interpretation of verb-initial versus subject-initial clauses can be described as a clause-type distinction between eventuality existentials versus predication clauses. Concerning (c), it is proposed that this clause-type distinction has to do with how the subject and the predicate are put together semantically/syntactically. Namely, it is proposed that in eventuality existentials (the entity denoted by) the subject saturates/is selected by (the property denoted by) the predicate, while in predication clauses it is (the property denoted by) the predicate that saturates/is 'selected' by (the second-order property denoted by) the subject. For the proposed analysis to be right, (a) the clause-type distinction between eventuality existentials and predication clauses, (b) the complementary distribution of the two clause types and (c) the semantic/syntactic derivation for the two clause types must be part of UC. What cannot be part of UG is the syntactic manifestation of this semantic distinction across languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between thought and reality was a focal point of Wyclif's reflection. On the one hand, Wyclif believed that thought was linguistically constrained by its own nature; on the other hand, he considered thought to be related to reality in its elements and constitution. Hence he deemed language, thought, and external reality to be of the same logical coherence. Within this context, the theory of supposition was intended to explain the different roles that terms can have in relation to language and the extra-mental world when they appear as extremes in propositions. Characteristically, his theory of supposition provides an account not only of the truth-values of a sentence, but also of its meaning; it is not therefore simply a theory of reference, but a sort of complex analysis of language viewed as a semiotic system whose unique interpretative model was reality itself. It gives clear evidence of Wyclif's realist stance and of his con-viction that any kind of linguistic and semantic features must be grounded on onto-logical structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although he does not have an explicit theory of supposition as is found in the works of Latin medieval philosophers, Avicenna (Ibn Slna) has two doctrines giving something equivalent: the threefold distinction of quiddity (triplex status naturae), corresponding to a division of simple, personal and material supposition, and his analyses of truth conditions for categorical propositions, where sentential context determines in part the reference of their terms. While he does address which individuals are being referred to by the universal terms used there, Avicenna concentrates more on the varied tempo-ral durations of the predications being made. In Western terms, he has incorporated ampliation and restriction into the theory of supposition itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What in Aristotle corresponds, in whole or (more likely) in part, to our contemporary notion of predication? This paper sketches counterparts in Aristotle's text to our theories of expression and of truth, and on this basis inquires into his treatment of sentences assigning an individual to its kinds. In some recent accounts, the Metaphysics offers a fresh look at such sentences in terms of matter and form, in contrast to the simpler theory on offer in the Categories. I argue that the Metaphysics initiates no change in this regard over the Categories. The point that form is (metaphysically) predicated of matter is a contribution, not to the account of statement predication, but to the analysis of compound material substances. Otherwise put, in our terms Aristotelian form is not - in particular, is not also - a propositional function, but a function from matter to compound material substances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]