ABSTRACT
Reference in the philosophy of language is, at a minimum, a relationship between words and items in the world, typically individual objects, but depending on one’s views about what there is, words can also refer to events, processes, classes, or kinds. This rudimentary notion of reference is found in Pre-Socratic philosophical fragments. Spoken sounds signify affections of the soul, which include both thoughts and perceptions. Affections of the soul, in turn, enable human beings to think about actual objects in virtue of the human understanding having forms in common with these objects. Early medieval philosophy of language continues the trajectory set by Aristotle and the Stoics to focus on propositional content and its logical structure, abstracted from reference, as the ground of the intelligibility of language. Medieval grammarians, logicians, and philosophers turned to this issue in response to the intensified study of fallacies and sophisms that the rediscovery in Europe in the 12th century of Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations inspired.
