Language and Reality: Stoic Semantics Reconstructed

This thesis aims to understand Stoic views on the relationship of language to the world. I supplement Stoic fragmentary evidence with new evidence from the works of ancient grammarians who, I argue, worked within a Stoic framework, and can serve as sources for Stoic theories. On the basis of this evidence, I present an account of the semantic apparatus of each of the subjects of the three main types of Stoic propositions: proper and common nouns (“Socrates”, “man”), demonstrative pronouns (“this”), and indefinite pronouns (“someone”, “something”). I argue that they all serve a purpose in the overall semantic theory, each capturing a different facet of reality. Demonstratives, for example, enable us to speak about objects even if we know nothing about them, provided that they are in front of us. Nouns, on the other hand, enable us to speak about things which are absent or no longer exist (e.g. Socrates), while indefinite pronouns are used to express universal propositions, which, for the Stoics, take the form “if something is a man, it is a rational animal”. My account sheds light on a unified semantic theory that is tightly connected to epistemology in ways that have previously been overlooked. I show that the classifications and distinctions made by the Stoics at a linguistic level often rest on epistemological considerations, and that propositions serve different epistemological purposes depending on the semantic features of their subject.

Department dc:contributor.department

Classics

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Durand, Marion Olivia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Inwood, Brad

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/102858

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/102858