Abstract

After a brief introduction I compare accounts of what it is to say something I find in Plato, Frege and Grice, and I distinguish linguistic from practical meaning and words that signify things from ‘syncategorematic’ or ‘grammatical’ words. I then argue that the relation between a signifying word and what it signifies must be understood in terms of two complementary acts, already recognised in antiquity, quantifying and predicating. Discussing quantification, I show how problems about universals can be avoided by accepting Aristotle's distinction between possible and actual existence. Discussing predication, I defend Aristotle's view that there are more forms of predication than one, and consider this issue in connection with non-mathematical discourse.