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100 Predicates and Subjects

PREDICATES AND VERBS

The ﬁrst and original home of subjects and predicates was logic. More

particularly, it was Aristotelian logic; and the distinction between subject and

predicate had nothing to do with grammar. That is the well-rounded truth.

But it requires a couple of riders.

The ﬁrst rider concerns the Stoics. It is best introduced by way of a

grammatical text which I have so far held under wraps:

It is disputed whether the present work [i.e. the Art of Grammar] is genuinely by

Dionysius Thrax. Some have argued as follows … And that there are two men is also

shown by their deﬁnitions of the verb. For our author deﬁnes the verb as follows:

A verb is a caseless expression which accepts times and persons and numbers, and

indicates an activity or a passivity; but Dionysius Thrax, as Apollonius says in The

Verb, deﬁnes the verb in this way: A verb is an expression which signiﬁes a predicate.

(scholiast to Dionysius Thrax, 161.6–10)¹⁵

The Art ascribed to Dionysius deﬁnes the verb in one way—and the

scholiast cites from §13 [46.4–5]. Dionysius himself—according to Apol-

lonius—deﬁned it in another way. Perhaps the commentator who cites

Apollonius’ Verb (a work lost to us) was muddled? Perhaps Apollonius was

mistaken? Perhaps Dionysius changed his mind about the verb, or offered two

different but compatible deﬁnitions? Such things are ever possible. But in fact

the commentator and Apollonius were doubtless both right; and on this point

the Art ascribed to Dionysius—whatever its date and its origins—differed

from the Art written by Dionysius.

In any event, the real Dionysius Thrax said that verbs signify predicates.

His view found its way into the Byzantine encyclopaedias:

A purely verbal expression is called a verb (e.g. strike, write), when it is said purely

and alone. What is signiﬁed by a purely verbal expression is called a predicate.

(Suda,s.v.ῥῆμα)¹⁶

¹⁵ περὶ δέ τοῦ εἰ ἔστι γνήσιον τὸ παρὸν σύγγραμμα ∆ιονυσίου τοῦ Θρᾳκὸς ἠμφισβήτηται·

ἐπεχείρησαν γάρ τινες οὕτως εἰπόντες ὡς ... ὅτι δὲ ἄλλος ἐστὶν ἐκεῖνος καὶ ἄλλος οὗτος,

δηλοῖ καὶ ὁ παρ᾿ ἀμφοτέρων ὁρισμὸς τοῦ ῥήματος· οὗτος μὲν γὰρ οὕτως τὸ ῥῆμα ὁρίζεται·

ῥῆμά ἐστι λέξις ἄπτωτος, ἐπιδεκτικὴ χρόνων τε καὶ προσώπων καὶ ἀριθμῶν, ἐνέργειαν ἢ

πάθος παριστᾶσα. ὁ δὲ ∆ιονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ, ὥς φησιν ᾿Απολλώνιος ἐν τῷ ῾Ρηματικῷ, οὕτως

ὁρίζεται τὸ ῥῆμα· ῥῆμά ἐστι λέξις κατηγόρημα σημαίνουσα.

¹⁶ ῥῆμα λέγεται ἡ ἁπλῶς ῥηματικὴ φωνή, οἷον τύπτω, γράφω, ἁπλῶς μόνον λεγόμενον·

τὸ δὲ ἐκ τῆς ἁπλῶς ῥηματικῆς φωνῆς σημαινόμενον κατηγορία καλεῖται.

Predicates and Verbs 101

AnditseemsatﬁrstsightreasonabletolinktheviewtoAristotle,whosays

that

a verb … is a sign of items which are said of something else.

(Int 16b6–7)¹⁷

Since an item which is said of something is an item which is predicated of

something, Aristotle holds that verbs are signs of predicates—and that is

just the view of Dionysius. Nonetheless, most scholars will deem that the

Dionysian view is of Stoic rather than Aristotelian inspiration.

The situation is in fact rather murky. The Stoics certainly did connect

verbs and predicates; but according to the testimony of the grammarians

they did not do so in the Dionysian way. Thus one commentator assures us

that

the Stoic philosophers … list the parts of sayings as follows: ﬁrst, name; secondly,

appellation; thirdly—and together—verb and participle, saying that a verb is a

predicate and that a participle is an inﬂection of a verb (i.e. a derivative of a verb).

(scholiast to Dionysius Thrax, 356.7–12)¹⁸

The commentators on the Dionysian Art often draw on Apollonius, and

sometimes mangle him. They probably do so here. For according to Apol-

lonius,

every inﬁnitive is a verbal name—after all, the Stoics call it a verb, while ‘walks’ or

‘writes’ (and also their inﬂections) they call predicates or accidents.

(synt i 50 [43.14–44.1])¹⁹

Aristotle claims that verbs signify predicates, and Dionysius deﬁned the verb

as an expression which signiﬁes a predicate. The Stoics are said to have held

a different view: verbs, according to them, actually are predicates—or at any

rate, the ﬁnite verbal forms are predicates.

That is what the grammarians report. And there is indirect support, of a

sort, in a philosophical text. Plutarch, writing about what Plato called primary

sayings, states that such a saying is an assertible

¹⁷ ῥῆμα δέ ἐστι ... τῶν καθ ᾿ ἑτέρου λεγομένων σημεῖον.

¹⁸ οἱ γὰρ Στωϊκοὶ φιλόσοφοι ... καταλέγουσιν οὕτω τὰ μέρη τοῦ λόγου· πρῶτον ὄνομα,

δεύτερον προσηγορία, τρίτον ὑφ᾿ ἓν ῥῆμα καὶ μετοχή, τὸ μὲν ῥῆμα κατηγόρημα λέγοντες,

τὴν δὲ μετοχὴν ἔγκλιμα ῥήματος, ὅ ἐστι ῥήματος παραγωγή.

¹⁹ πᾶν ἀπαρέμφατον ὄνομά ἐστι ῥήματος, εἴγε καὶ οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς αὐτὸ μὲν καλοῦσι

ῥῆμα, τὸ δὲ περιπατεῖ ἢ γράφει κατηγόρημα ἢ σύμβαμα, καὶ ἔτι τὰς ἀπὸ τούτων ἐγκλίσεις.

102 Predicates and Subjects

which is composed of a name and a verb, which the logicians call a case and a

predicate.

(quaest Plat 1009c)²⁰

In the simple sentence or primary saying

Edward lives

‘lives’ is verb and predicate (and ‘Edward’ is name and case). Plutarch does

not refer speciﬁcally to the Stoics; but the terminology he uses was used by the

Stoics, and it is reasonable to suppose that among his anonymous logicians

were the Stoic logicians. So Plutarch may be taken to imply that the Stoics

took verbs to be predicates.

Nonetheless, the view that, for the Stoics, verbs and predicates were one

and the same thing is contradicted by most of our more philosophical sources.

The account of Stoic logic in Diogenes Laertius includes this remark:

Predicates are classed among the deﬁcient sayables … A predicate is what is stated of

something, or an object constructible about some item or items (as Apollodorus says),

or a deﬁcient sayable constructible with a nominative case to make an assertible.

(vii 63–64)²¹

Stoic predicates—according to that account—are not verbs. For they are

not linguistic items at all: rather, they are a sort of sayable. By uttering the

sentence

The king was in his counting-house

I may assert something, namely that the king was in his counting-house. I

may also (and of course at the same time) say something of the king—that

he was in his counting-house, and of the king’s counting-house—that the

king was in it, and of the pair of them—that the former was in the latter.

What I thereby assert of one of the items, or of the pair of items, is a

predicate.

Verbs, according to the Stoa, are bodies: they are pieces of hammered air.

Sayables, among them predicates, are incorporeal. Far from being identical

with one another, verbs and predicates are as different as two Stoic items

can be.

²⁰ τοῦτο δ᾿ ἐξ ὀνόματος καὶ ῥήματος συνέστηκεν, ὧν τὸ μὲν πτῶσιν οἱ διαλεκτικοὶ τὸ δὲ

κατηγόρημα καλοῦσιν.

²¹ ἐν μὲν οὖν τοῖς ἐλλιπέσι λεκτοῖς τέτακται τὰ κατηγορήματα ... ἔστι δὲ τὸ κατηγόρημα τὸ

κατά τινος ἀγορευόμενον ἢ πρᾶγμα συντακτὸν περί τινος ἢ τινῶν, ὡς οἱ περὶ ᾿Απολλόδωρόν

φασιν, ἢ λεκτὸν ἐλλιπὲς συντακτὸν ὀρθῇ πτώσει πρὸς ἀξιώματος γένεσιν.

Predicates and Verbs 103

Scholars generally—and no doubt correctly—suppose that Diogenes

Laertius is right and Apollonius wrong, or else that Diogenes represents

the standard Stoic view and Apollonius at best a minor heterodoxy. But if,

pace Apollonius, Stoic predicates are not verbs, they are nonetheless closely

connected to verbs; for according to Diogenes Laertius,

a verb is a part of sayings which signiﬁes an incomposite predicate (as Diogenes says),

or (as others say) an element of sayings which has no cases and which is constructible

about some item or items—e.g. write, talk.

(vii 58)²²

The second of those two deﬁnitions mimics one of the Stoic deﬁnitions of the

predicate, and the ﬁrst deﬁnition explains verbs in terms of predicates. Thus

Stoic verbs and predicates are not identical; nor do they even pair off one

against one—for not all predicates are signiﬁed by verbs. Nonetheless, there

is a connexion: verbs signify a certain type of predicate—and that establishes

a link between grammar and logic, or (to use the Stoic jargon) between the

theory of signiﬁers and the theory of signiﬁeds.

The Stoics wrote much about predicates—we hear of monographs On

Predicates by Cleanthes, by Sphaerus, by Chrysippus (Diogenes Laertius, vii

175, 178, 191). Scholars like to suppose that they were inspired by the

Megaric philosopher, Clinomachus of Thurii,

who was the ﬁrst to write about assertibles and predicates and the like.

(Diogenes Laertius, ii 112)²³

But the nature and the extent of the inﬂuence are matters of conjecture, since

all we know about Clinomachus is contained in the sentence I have just cited.

However that may be, the Stoics put their predicates to work. The

items had a signiﬁcance in Stoicism outside logic—notably in the theory

of causation and in the theory of action. Within logic, the Stoics classiﬁed

simple assertibles by reference to their predicational structure:

A predicative assertible is one composed of a nominative case and a predicate, for

example

Dio walks;

a predicatory assertible is one composed of a demonstrative nominative case and a

predicate, for example

²² ῥῆμα δέ ἐστι μέρος λόγου σημαῖνον ἀσύνθετον κατηγόρημα, ὡς ὁ ∆ιογένης, ἤ, ὥς τινες,

στοιχεῖον λόγου ἄπτωτον, σημαῖνόν τι συντακτὸν περί τινος ἢ τινῶν, οἷον γράφω, λέγω.

²³ Κλεινόμαχος ... ὁ Θούριος, ὃς πρῶτος περὶ ἀξιωμάτων καὶ κατηγορημάτων καὶ τῶν

τοιούτων συνέγραψε.

104 Predicates and Subjects

This item walks;

and an indeterminate assertible is one composed of an indeterminate particle (or

indeterminate particles) and a predicate, for example

Someone walks.

(Diogenes Laertius, vii 70)²⁴

In addition, the Stoics distinguished among various types of predicate:

Of predicates, some are upright, some supine, some neither. Upright are those which

are construed with one of the oblique cases to produce a predicate (e.g. hears, sees,

talks). Supine are those which are construed with a passive particle (e.g. am heard,

am seen). Neither are those which are neither way (e.g. to think, to walk).

(Diogenes Laertius, vii 64)²⁵

The fragments of Chrysippus’ Logical Investigations show that he had engaged

in reﬂection more detailed and more reﬁned than anything which is to be

found in the Peripatetic texts on predication. For example:

If there are plural predicates, then there are plurals of plurals ad inﬁnitum. But that

is certainly not so. So not the ﬁrst.

(PHerc 307, ii 21–26)²⁶

Chrysippus did not deny the existence of plural predicates—rather, there

was a little argument which threatened their coherence and which he had to

refute.

It is plain that there is the closest connection between many of those logical

notions and certain corresponding grammatical notions. A supine predicate,

for example, is one which takes a passive particle to make a predicate. A

passive particle is a preposition of agency—‘by’, for example; and the Stoics

mean to say that S is a supine predicate if and only if S + ‘by’ + C(where

C is an oblique case) is a predicate. That is not, in principle, a grammatical

comment; for it concerns sayables, not expressions. But it is presented in

a grammatical terminology, and it is—or so I should say—unintelligible

²⁴ κατηγορικὸν δέ ἐστι τὸ συνεστὸς ἐκ πτώσεως ὀρθῆς καὶ κατηγορήματος, οἷον ∆ίων περι-

πατεῖ· καταγορευτικὸν δέ ἐστι τὸ συνεστὸς ἐκ πτώσεως ὀρθῆς δεικτικῆς καὶ κατηγορήματος,

οἷον οὗτος περιπατεῖ· ἀόριστον δέ ἐστι τὸ συνεστὸς ἐξ ἀορίστου μορίου ἢ ἀορίστων μορίων

καὶ κατηγορήματος, οἷον τὶς περιπατεῖ ...

²⁵ καὶ τὰ μέν ἐστι τῶν κατηγορημάτων ὀρθά, ἃ δ᾿ ὕπτια, ἃ δ᾿ οὐδέτερα. ὀρθὰ μὲν οὖν

ἐστι τὰ συντασσόμενα μιᾷ τῶν πλαγίων πτώσεων πρὸς κατηγορήματος γένεσιν, οἷον ἀκούει,

ὁρᾷ, διαλέγεται· ὕπτια δ᾿ ἐστὶ τὰ συντασσόμενα τῷ παθητικῷ μορίῳ, οἷον ἀκούομαι, ὁρῶμαι·

οὐδέτερα δ᾿ ἐστὶ τὰ μηδετέρως ἔχοντα, οἷον φρονεῖν, περιπατεῖν.

²⁶ εἰ πληθυντικά ἐστιν κατηγορήματα, καὶ πληθυντικῶν πληθυντικά ἐστι μέχρι εἰς ἄπειρον·

οὐ πάνυ δὲ τοῦτο· οὐδ᾿ ἄρα τὸ πρῶτον.

Predicates and Verbs 105

unless it is regarded as a perverse way of expressing a piece of grammar: an

expression E expresses a supine predicate if and only if E + ‘by’ + N(where

N is a name) is a verbal formula. (And V is a verbal formula if and only if N

+ Visasentence.)

So in the Porch, logic and grammar saunter hand-in-hand; and it is

tempting to infer that predicates—despite all the negative evidence which I

have taken from the grammarians—were in fact quite at home, in the ancient

world, in the house of grammar.

Moreover, Dionysius Thrax—the real Dionysius, who deﬁned verbs as

expressions which signify predicates—surely took his notion of the verb from

the Stoics. True, if you look at the verb in isolation, you might conclude that

he took over something which was common to Peripatetics and Stoics—that

his verb had a philosophical pedigree but not a speciﬁcally Stoic pedigree. But

the grammatical commentator who reports Dionysius’ deﬁnition of the verb

and notes that it differs from the deﬁnition found in the Art also remarks, as

further evidence for the inauthenticity of the work, that

the technical writers refer to Dionysius Thrax and say that he separated appellations

from names and connected pronouns to articles, whereas the technical author of the

Art knows appellations and names as a single part of sayings … and he recognizes

articles and pronouns as two parts of sayings and not as one.

(scholiast to Dionysius Thrax, 160.25–31)²⁷

The real Dionysius Thrax distinguished between names and appellations, or

between proper and common nouns; and he did not distinguish between

articles and pronouns. On both points he took the same view as the Stoics,

and on both points—it is plausible to think—he was following the Stoics.

So we shall reasonably conclude that when he deﬁned a verb as an item which

signiﬁes a predicate he was again following the Stoics (rather than following

Aristotle, or a general philosophical tradition, or his nose).

However that may be, the case of Dionysius shows that we must qualify

the claim that the distinction between subjects and predicates had nothing

to do with ancient grammar: at least one ancient grammarian appealed to

predicates in one of his grammatical deﬁnitions, and that deﬁnition had a

philosophical and a logical origin.

²⁷ οἱ τεχνικοὶ μέμνηνται ∆ιονυσίου τοῦ Θρᾳκὸς καὶ λέγουσιν ὅτι διεχώριζε τὴν προσηγορίαν

ἐκεῖνος ἀπὸ τοῦ ὀνόματος καὶ συνῆπτε τῷ ἄρθρῳ τὴν ἀντωνυμίαν· ὁ δὲ παρὼν τεχνικὸς τὴν

προσηγορίαν καὶ τὸ ὄνομα ἓν μέρος λόγου οἶδεν ... καὶ τὸ ἄρθρον καὶ τὴν ἀντωνυμίαν δύο

μέρη λόγου γινώσκει, καὶ οὐχὶ ἕν.

106 Predicates and Subjects

But Dionysius does not mention subjects—he invokes the notion of a

predicate and not the twin notion of a subject–predicate sentence. Moreover,

Dionysius’ view had no echo in the later grammatical tradition; and although

some scholars have argued that Stoic logic had a massive inﬂuence on ancient

grammatical theory, as a matter of fact Stoic predicates did not move any

grammarian after Dionysius. In any event, the notion of predication which

came to dominate mediaeval and modern logic, and against which Frege and

de Saussure rebelled, owes nothing to Stoicism—it is wholly Peripatetic.

NAMES AND VERBS IN ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC

The second rider to the well-rounded truth which excludes subjects and

predicates from ancient grammar is concerned with Peripatetic predication.

The study of logic in late antiquity had a ﬁxed structure, and the

structure was determined by the uncontroversial observation that inferences

or syllogisms are compounds of propositions, and propositions compounds

of terms. To that observation was annexed the general claim that you cannot

rationally study an item until you have ﬁrst studied its constituent parts.

It was concluded that in studying logic you should begin with terms, then

move up to propositions, and ﬁnally tackle syllogisms and their various

species. Now by some pre-established harmony, Aristotle’s Organon—the

summa of later Greek logic—is ideally adapted to that conclusion. For in the

Organon there comes ﬁrst the Categories, which discusses terms, then the de

Interpretatione, which deals with propositions, next the Prior Analytics, which

elaborate a general theory of the syllogism, and ﬁnally the Posterior Analytics

and the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations, which handle the different sorts

or species of syllogism.

And so it was that, in late antiquity—and for ﬁfteen hundred years

thereafter—every student of logic, once he had conned Porphyry’s Isagoge

or Introduction, began with the Categories, then read the de Interpretatione,

and so on. The argument which underlay that pedagogical practice is frail:

why, after all, should we study the parts of a chain-saw before we wonder at

the chain-saw as a whole? And as for the Organon, it is one of the stranger

constructions in the history of philosophy. Nothing in the central part of

the Categories prepares the way to the later books of the Organon.The

de Interpretatione neither builds on the Categories nor lays the foundations

for the Analytics.TheAnalytics has no use either for the Categories or

for the de Interpretatione.TheOrganon was jerry-built—and jerry-built

Names and Verbs in Aristotelian Logic 107

long after Aristotle’s day. It is the ricketiest of constructions. Yet how it

lasted.

However that may be, syllogisms are indeed sequences of propositions—of

the propositions which constitute their premisses and their conclusion. And

propositions are indeed composed of terms; for, as Aristotle puts it,

I call a term that into which a proposition dissolves—I mean what is predicated and

that of which it is predicated—when to be or not to be is added.

(APr 24b16–18)²⁸

The Categories does not use the word ‘term’; but it certainly says something

about predication and predicates, and it was for that reason taken for an

introduction to the theory of terms. Now between the Categories and the

Prior Analytics comes the de Interpretatione. Students were instructed to ﬁnd

in that essay a theory of the proposition. In fact, they must have noticed

that, after its opening paragraph, the essay begins not with an account of

propositions but with some rapid remarks about names and verbs. Names

and verbs seem to be presented as parts or elements of propositions. We

know that terms are the elements of propositions. So must there not be some

close liaison between terms—or subjects and predicates—on the one hand

and names and verbs on the other?

A connection is indeed frequently signalled in the ancient texts. Alexander

is brisk:

The terms in a simple proposition are name and verb.

(in APr 14.28–29)²⁹

Galen says of predicative propositions that

the parts from which they are constructed we call terms, following the old usage—for

example, in ‘Dio walks’, they are Dio and walking, and we take Dio to be the subject

term and to walk the predicate. So when a proposition is made of a name and a verb,

that is how the terms should be distinguished.

(inst log ii 2–3)³⁰

²⁸ ὅρον δὲ καλῶ εἰς ὃν διαλύεται ἡ πρότασις, οἷον τό τε κατηγορούμενον καὶ τὸ καθ ᾿ οὗ

κατηγορεῖται, προστιθεμένου τοῦ εἶναι ἢ μὴ εἶναι. After ‘προστιθεμένου’themanuscriptshave

‘ἢ διαιρουμένου’; but ‘or divided’ (or ‘or removed’) makes little sense.

²⁹ εἰσὶ δὲ ὅροι ἐν ἁπλῇ προτάσει ὄνομα καὶ ῥῆμα.

³⁰ τὰ μέρη δὲ ἐξ ὧν σύγκεινται καλοῦμεν ὅρους ἑπόμενοι τῇ παλαιᾷ συνηθείᾳ· οἷον ἐν τῇ

∆ίων περιπατεῖ τόν τε ∆ίωνα καὶ τὸ περιπατεῖν, ὑποκείμενον ὅρον τὸν ∆ίωνα, κατηγορούμενον

δὲ τὸ περιπατεῖν λαμβάνομεν. ὅταν μὲν οὖν ἐξ ὀνόματος ᾖ καὶ ῥήματος ἡ πρότασις, οὕτω

χρὴ διαιρεῖν τοὺς ὅρους.—That is Kalbﬂeisch’s text: it cannot be right; but whatever words Galen

may have written, his meaning is not in doubt.

108 Predicates and Subjects

And Apuleius:

A proposition, as Plato says in the Theaetetus, consists of at least two of the parts of

sayings, a name and a verb—for example:

Apuleius talks.

… Further, of those two aforesaid parts, one is called subject or subjective (as

Apuleius) and the other declarative (as talks).

(int iv [191.16–192.8])³¹

‘Dio walks’ and ‘Apuleius talks’ each consists of a name and a verb. In each,

the name is the subject and the verb the predicate.

The view persisted. It is summed up by Martianus Capella when he says

that

a proposition has two parts: the one which consists in the name is subject, the one

which consists in the verb is predicate.

(iv 393)³²

And in Ammonius you may read this:

Those items which signify a nature or a person or an activity or a passivity or some

combination of person with activity or passivity—all those Aristotle divides into

names and verbs. He calls verbs those which are timed or which are predicated in

propositions, and names those which are without time or which supply the need for

subjects.

(in Int 12.16–20)³³

Predicates and verbs are one, subjects and names are one.

Of course, no ancient philosopher really meant to say that every sub-

ject–predicate proposition answers to a name–verb sentence, the subject

being the name and the predicate the verb—that was quite clearly false.

Rather, they meant to parrot Plato. Apuleius refers to the Theaetetus.(For

‘in Theaeteto’ is the text which lies behind the nonsense transmitted by the

manuscripts.) But he has confused the Theaetetus with the Sophist,inwhich

Plato says this:

³¹ ceterum propositio, ut ait in Theaeteto Plato, duabus paucissimis orationis partibus constat, nomine

et verbo, ut Apuleius disserit … porro ex duabus praedictis partibus altera subiectiva nominatur velut

subdita, ut Apuleius; altera declarativa, ut disserit.

³² nam sunt proloquii partes duae: quae in nomine subiectiva dicitur, quae in verbo declarativa.

³³ τὰ μὲν οὖν φύσεων ἢ προσώπων ἢ ἐνεργειῶν ἢ παθῶν ἢ ποιᾶς συμπλοκῆς προσώπου

πρὸς ἐνέργειαν ἢ πάθος σημαντικὰ πάντα ὁ ᾿Αριστοτέλης εἰς ὀνόματα διαιρεῖ καὶ ῥήματα, τὰ

μὲν κατὰ χρόνον λεγόμενα ἢ κατηγορούμενα ἐν ταῖς προτάσεσι ῥήματα καλῶν, τὰ δὲ ἄνευ

χρόνου λεγόμενα ἢ τὴν χρείαν συμπληροῦντα τῶν ὑποκειμένων ὀνόματα.

Names and Verbs in Aristotelian Logic 109

—When someone says A man learns, you say that that is a saying of the smallest

and primary sort?—Yes.—Yes, for it thereby shows something about what is, or is

coming to be, or has come to be, or will come to be; and it doesn’t just name but it

achieves something, linking verbs to names.

(Sophist, 262cd)³⁴

The primary and simplest propositions divide into name and verb; and it is

in these cases—the elementary and the paradigmatic cases—that the later

tradition declared the division into subject and predicate to be the same as

the division into name and verb.

So consider some simple sentence—for example:

Bugles sang.

There is a verb there, and a name. The name is represented by the word

‘bugles’ and the verb by ‘sang’. (But the name in the sentence is perhaps

‘bugle’ rather than ‘bugles’; and the verb is perhaps ‘sing’ or ‘to sing’ rather

than ‘sang’.) There is also a subject and a predicate; and ‘bugles’ represents the

subject, ‘sang’ the predicate. More generally, the simplest sentences consist of

a single name and a single verb; they also consist of a subject and a predicate;

and the subject is the name, the predicate the verb.

Here, then, is a clear case in which grammar and logic interacted with one

another. But it is less clear whether grammar imposed itself on logic (as Frege

grumbled) or logic on grammar (as de Saussure alleged). Indeed, you might

be inclined to think that there was no imposition in either direction—merely

a conﬂation. And a harmless conﬂation. For if the thesis about the simplest

of sentences was sometimes carelessly advanced as though it applied to all

sentences, and although such carelessness is deplorable, the thesis itself seems

modest, and innocuous.

But it is false—or at least, any Peripatetic is obliged to judge it false.

For in Aristotelian logic, subjects and predicates are homogenous, in the

following sense: any item which may function as a predicate may function

as a subject, and vice versa. That fact is a presupposition of the conversion

rules of Aristotelian syllogistic, and the rules are a fundamental part of the

syllogistic. Names and verbs, on the other hand, are heterogeneous: the slot

occupied by a verb may not be occupied by a name, nor vice versa.Ifyou

interchange the name and the verb in

³⁴ —ὅταν εἴπῃ τις ἄνθρωπος μανθάνει, λόγον εἶναι φῂς τοῦτον ἐλάχιστόν τε καὶ

πρῶτον;—ἔγωγε.—δηλοῖ γὰρ ἤδη που τότε περὶ τῶν ὄντων ἢ γιγνομένων ἢ γεγονότ-

ων ἢ μελλόντων, καὶ οὐκ ὀνομάζει μόνον ἀλλά τι περαίνει, συμπλέκων τὰ ῥήματα τοῖς

ὀνόμασι.