4.2.5. The Thomist Reading of
De interpretatione
16a
Thomas Aquinas will not depart from this classification, though his taxonomy is more complex. Taking into account the remarks appearing passim in his commentary on the De interpretatione, whereas, at IV, 38 et seq., he seems to concern himself with a classification of the voces, reserving the appellation signum only for the voces significativae, in IV, 46, on the other hand, where he attempts to explain why Aristotle, in speaking of animal sounds, used the term soni and not voces (it was necessary, Thomas explains, to take into consideration the sounds of animals which, not being furnished with lungs, are not capable of uttering vocal sounds), he suggests the possibility of a more detailed classification, which considers the sonus as a genus.
The Aristotelian translation available to Thomas was not yet that of William of Moerbeke (who was shrewd enough to translate symbolon and semeion correctly as two distinct notions), but basically that of Boethius, whose Latin term for both semiotic phenomena is nota (which the commentary then proceeds to read as the equivalent of signum).
Bearing in mind the probable sources he was relying on,34 his classification could be summed up as in Figure 4.4.
This classification betrays a number of influences. In the first instance, along the lines of Saint Augustine, Thomas calls every meaningful vox a signum. But, in II, 19, he speaks of a signum also apropos of the military trumpet (tuba), which is evidently not a case of sonus vocalis. It would appear, then, that a signum for him was any case of meaningful utterance, vocal or nonvocal. But, having translated the two Aristotelian terms with signum = nota, he takes no account of the inferential nature of the Stoic semeia, ignores every type of index except sonus, and places evident indices like the moaning of the sick and the sounds made by animals among the meaningful voces.
4.2.6. Transcribability and Articulation
In the second place there appears in Thomas a distinction between voces litteratae and articulatae and voces illitteratae and non articulatae. The opposition litteratae/illitteratae appears to go back directly to the text of Aristotle, where he speaks of utterances that are agrammatoi (like those of the animals), that is, which cannot be transcribed with letters of the alphabet. Which would explain why blitris (a typical example used by the Stoics and subsequently in the Middle Ages, along with buba and bufbaf, of vocal utterances that, though transcribable, signify nothing) appears among the voces litteratae, though it is not meaningful. The problem is rather that of defining what is meant by articulata (with its opposite non articulata).
Figure 4.4
It is unclear whether articulation concerns the sounds only or their graphemic transcription as well, and Aristotle’s texts are not explicit on this issue.35 In his commentary on the De interpretatione, Boethius (col. 395 D) appears determined to unite the two types of articulation. Some ideas become clearer if we go on to read Priscian:36 we recognize, in fact, a line of thought that is found in the grammatical tradition, and also in authors like Vincent of Beauvais.37 A vox articulata for Priscian is one that is “copulata cum aliquo sensu mentis eius qui loquitur,” and utterances are no longer classified according to a binary taxonomy, but following the matrix represented in Figure 4.5.
Figure 4.5
This matrix presents two distinct problems. The lesser problem concerns its internal coherence, given that the croaking of the frog appears to be transcribable in letters of the alphabet—see Aristophanes’s brekekex koax koax—while the lowing of the ox is not. But the classification probably represents current linguistic usage (simply put, that it was more customary to spell out the croaking of the frog than the lowing of the ox), and Priscian was likely referring to a panoply of examples handed down to him by the Greek tradition. The second problem concerns Thomas’s solution. If Thomas is following Priscian, it is hard to understand why the difference between articulation and nonarticulation appears to distinguish nonmeaningful utterances (non significativa), while it is absent from the branch devoted to meaningful utterances (significativa)—in which the names are articulate and lettered, but not the animal sounds.
The fact is that behind this complex of questions there lurk a number of semiotic problems that are by no means negligible. Thomas’s classification is anticipated by Ammonius.38
After he has made it clear that for him being litterata (in other words, transcribable in letters) is the same thing, in the case of a vox, as being articulata, Ammonius seems to place the difference articulata / non articulata twice under two different genera, so that his classification can only be transcribed in the form of a matrix, as was the case for Priscian’s (Figure 4.6).
Thomas (In 1. De Int. Exp. IV, 38) appears to take up only the first part of Ammonius’s suggestion, and he writes: “Additur autem prima differentia, scilicet significativa, ad differentiam quarumcumque vocum non significantium, sive sit vox litterata et articulata, sicut “blitris,” sive non litterata et non articulata, sicut sibilus per nihilo factus.” Why does Thomas seem to be embarrassed by a classification that would suggest a matrix rather than a tree?
Figure 4.6
The problem seems to lie with the very nature of a tree (of Porphyrian inspiration), which proceeds by genera, species, and specific differences. In other words, the problem arises when, starting from a series of definitions given in discursive form, one attempts to regiment them in the form of a Porphyrian tree (something Thomas did not do, though it was precisely because he did not do so that the problem facing him did not become evident). As we demonstrated in Chapter 1 apropos of the Porphyrian tree, in order to give an account of any organization of the universe (even, as in the present case, a classification of signs and voces), the same pair of differences ought to be reproduced over and over again under different genera. If Thomas had followed this procedure, the difference litterata/illitterata, like that between articulata and inarticulata, should have appeared under two distinct genera (Figure 4.7).
Figure 4.7
But, once he had accepted the principle that the same difference may be placed under two different genera, he ought to have reproduced it also under the signs that are meaningful ex institutione, where tuba or trumpet appears, seeing that—according to Aristotle, De anima 420b, 5–8—we have articulability among musical sounds too (to say nothing of their transcribability in musical notation).