Aristotle. What Aristotle has to say on linguistic
topics is almost wholly incidental to his concern with
logic. We find it chiefly in his treatises on the Categories
and on Interpretation (Perì hermeneías). Scattered re-
marks are also to be found in the Rhetoric and Poetics.
What he says is brief, to the point, and generally
sound. Aristotle does not dabble in etymology, though
he recognizes that words may be connected with each
other: “Things are said to be named derivatively, which
derive their name from some other name, but differ
from it in termination. Thus the grammarian derives
his name from the word grammar, and the courageous
man from the word courage” (Categories, 1; Works
..., ed. W. D. Ross, Vol. I, trans. E. M. Edghill, Ox-
ford [1928]). Here Aristotle was on the point of discover-
ing the difference between base and derivation mor-
pheme, but he never developed the idea any further.
Aristotle comes down squarely on the side of thésis
in the phúsis-thésis controversy. Words, he also says,
are “significant by convention” (On Interpretation,
16). He has no patience with the Platonic idea that
a word, as such, may be “true”: “Nouns and verbs...
as isolated terms, are not yet either true or false” (ibid.).
Truth or falsity can be predicated of propositions only.
His explanation of the relation between writing,
speech, and meaning is admirably clear: “Spoken words
are the symbols of mental experience and written
words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men
have not the same writing, so all men have not the
same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which
these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also
are those things of which our experiences are the
images” (ibid.). The later part of this quotation is the
foundation of general grammar.
Aristotle's main contribution to linguistics is his
careful definition of some important syntactic terms.
Thus he distinguishes between a proposition, such as
the man runs, which expresses a fact and hence may
be either true or false, and single expressions, such as
a man, or runs, or a footed animal with two feet. Not
all sentences are propositions, though. A prayer, for
instance, is not a proposition. The word sentence itself
is defined, somewhat weakly, as “a significant portion
of speech, some parts of which have an independent
meaning” (ibid.).
Finally, Aristotle defines the principal parts of
speech, ónoma (noun—or subject) and rhēma (verb—or
predicate). An ónoma is “a sound significant by con-
vention, which has no reference to time” (ibid.). A
rhēma is “that which, in addition to its proper meaning,
carries with it the notion of time... it is a sign of
something said of something else” (ibid.).
It will be seen that Aristotle defines the parts of
speech with reference to their function and meaning,
rather than with reference to their form. The categories
he has in mind should really be called sentence constit-
uents. The second part of the verb definition clearly
refers to the predicate of a sentence rather than to
a word class. It is significant that the oblique cases of
nouns are not looked upon by Aristotle as onómata,
since, as he says, they cannot form propositions to-
gether with a rhēma. More surprisingly Aristotle ac-
cepts only the present tense forms as true verbs. Past
and future forms are “not verbs, but tenses of verbs.”
The analysis of the phrase as consisting of a combi-
nation of ónoma and rhēma is not Aristotle's invention.
We find it previously in Plato, who hints vaguely at
it in Cratylus, but is somewhat more explicit in the
Sophist (fol. 262). Like Aristotle, Plato defines the terms
as sentence constituents rather than as word classes.
The ónoma indicates the performer of an action, the
rhēma the action itself. And every complete sentence
has to contain both an ónoma and a rhēma. Unlike
Aristotle, however, Plato does not count time indica-
tion as essential to the verb.
