William Heytesbury's Word-Order Theory of Propositional Sense

William Heytesbury's Word-Order Theory of Propositional Sense GEORGETTE SINKLER IN ARISTOTLE'S Sophistici elenchi, composition and division are treated as two kinds of ambiguity which arise because certain things (presumably linguistic entities within one and the same expression) can be connected with each other and can be separated from each other.' For instance, the expression "Whatever lives always is" is ambiguous with respect to composition and division because "always" can be separated from "is" and connected with "lives," or separated from "lives" and connected with "is." When "always" is connected with "lives" the sense of the expression is divided, and the sense is that whatever is sempiternal exists ("Whatever lives always, is"); when "always" is separated from "lives" and connected with "is" the sense of the expression is compounded, and the sense is that whatever lives is sempiternal ("Whatever lives, always is"). Whether the connecting or separating of these linguistic entities is accomplished by means of punctuation, pronunciation, grammatical rules, or the reflection of nature in language is one of the central issues of debate among medieval logicians who write about composition and division during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 2 These logicians attempt to explain why one sense of an ambiguous expression is to be called "compounded" Sophistici elenchi x66a23-37; 177a33-177b34. The followingpassages (in the Latin translation Heytesbury read) are especially relevant: "... ut posse sedentem ambulare et non scribentern scribere. Non enim idem significatsi dividens quis dicat et componens.... Et hoc similiter si quis componat 'non scribentem scribere'" (166a23-28). Also, "Nam eadem oratio divisa et composita non idem semper significare videbitur" (166a35-36 of Aristoteles latinus, VI, 1-3, De sophisticis elenchis, ed. Bernard G. Dod, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975). Other issues for debate were the number and types of contexts or modes in which compounded/divided ambiguity arises; the cause of people's being deceived by arguments constructed with compounded/divided ambiguous expressions; the reason whycompounded/divided ambiguous expressions appear to have only one sense. [365] 366 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:3 JULY 1989 and another sense "divided," rather than just "one sense" and "another sense," as the senses are called in equivocation, amphiboly, accent, and figura dictionis, the other types of ambiguity or linguistic fallacy recognized by Aristotle in the Sophistici elenchi. Because composition and division were viewed at this time as having to do with ambiguity, any argument which has as a premise a compounded/divided ambiguous expression was considered invalid. After the end of the thirteenth century, however, there was a radical shift in the way medieval logicians treated composition and division. They moved from discussing composition and division in terms of ambiguous expressions to discussing composition and division primarily in terms of correlated unambiguous sentences whose closely related word-orders present either a compounded or a divided sense. One of the chief concerns of these fourteenthcentury logicians was to provide an analysis of the validity or invalidity of arguments from the compounded sense to the divided sense, or vice versa. Although it is difficult to account for the shift, it is clear that William Heytesbury figures prominently in it.s (Heytesbury is one of several Oxford logicians and mathematicians associated with Merton College in the first half of the fourteenth century.4) But whether Heytesbury is responsible for the shift or is simply its most prominent proponent remains to be seen. In what follows, I will first give a brief overview of Heytesbury's treatment of composition and division; second, I will suggest what may have motivated that treatment ; and third, I will say something about the importance of Heytesbury's work to the development of logic in late scholasticism. Heytesbury's views on composition and division are most accessible in his De sensu composito et diviso (DSCD), 5a treatise on the compounded and divided senses of propositions which purports to be for the benefit of those who engage in university disputations. 6 The treatise, probably written before s The supporting evidence for this claim can be found in chapter 4 of my unpublished dissertation, Medieval Theories of Composition and Division (Cornell University, 1985). Heytesbury seems to have produced his most important work between 1331...