Ebook: Language in the Philosophy of Aristotle

This book examines Aristotle's theory of philosophical language in the light of his theory of signification. Although meaning, for Aristotle, is the property of a word whereby it arrests the attention and communicates understanding, Aristotle is not primarily interested in meaning in this general sense but rather in the meaning of nouns and verbs as they are the subjects and predicates of enunciations. Aristotle then in treating language is not interested in constructing a grammar of language. An examination of the De Interpretatione, the Poetics, and the Rhetoric substantiates my view that Aristotle is not interested in grammar.