Some Remarks on the Medieval Semantics

The term semantics is rather associated with the contemporary analytical philosophy, mainly with the ideas developed by Gottlob Frege and Alonzo Church. It is not associated with the Middle Ages, especially that this term comes from XIX-century. However, there is a long and rich tradition of contemporary investigation concerning this aspect of the medieval philosophy, which is accompanied with the problems of the speech, signs, siginification, properties of terms, representation and the role of the symbol in the medieval everyday life. Despite the lack of the definition of the term semantics in the secondary literature, we could understand this term as it is to refer the group of the issues mentioned above. Semantics in the Middle Ages is not precisely defined discipline, but it seems to be rather the complex of the reflections on the concept of the linguistic sign, its functions and classifications. Semantic reflection mainly emerged out from the ancient ideas concerning the problems of language and grammar. Let us make a suggestion, that the theory of properties of terms was the basis of the medieval semantics. Among the various properties, signification (significatio) was the most important property of terms, which were distinguished by the medievals. Thus, in this article, I would like to examine the basic semantic problems considered by the medieval authors, but mainly, I shall focus on the concept of signification. It seems, that