2. In what follows, citations to texts of Anselm refer by volume and page
peter king eternal, is Truth; since his ontology already contains an eternal being, he adds nothing by having eternal truths, and therefore (in some sense) eternal truth-bearers distinct from statements. But the details of his account depend on his views in the philosophy of religion rather than the philosophy of language, so we will not explore them here. notes 1.
Likewise, these activities do not require that Anselm had in mind a distinction between technical and nontechnical uses of language, much less that he was committed to the former. Desmond Paul Henry has argued that Anselm was in fact so committed, and that in his philosophical works he was trying to create a technical logical vocabulary that could be part of a system of formal logic, struggling against the confines of ordinary Latin usage. See: Desmond Henry, The "De grammatico" of St. Anselm: The Theory of Paronymy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964); Desmond Henry, The Logic of St. Anselm
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967); Desmond Henry, Commentary on "De Grammatico": The Historical-logical Dimensions of a Dialogue of St. Anselm (Dordrecht: Reidel Press, 1974). But for skepticism about Henry's thesis, see Marilyn McCord Adams, "Re-reading De grammatico, or, Anselm's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories," Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 11 (2000), and John
Marenbon, "Some Semantic Problems in Anselm's De Grammatico," in M. W. Herren, C. J. McDonagh, and R. G. Arthur (eds.), Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002).
In what follows, citations to texts of Anselm refer by volume and page number to F. S. Schmitt, Anselm Opera Omnia (cited in the bibliography at the end of this volume). The exception to this rule is for references to the Philosophical Fragments, for which page numbers are given to F. S. Schmitt, Ein neues unvollendetes Werk des LI. Anselm von Canterbury, in Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, vol. iii (1936). All translations from Anselm are my own.
See especially Augustine's De Magistro and De Doctrina Christiana.
Anselm regularly calls the significate of a sign its signification (significatio), an unfortunate habit since the term is ambiguous between (a) the property possessed by the sign in virtue of its activity of signifying, and (b) the significate of the sign. Anselm's intent is usually clear from context, and I will silently disambiguate his usage when it is called for.
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