Simboli, voci, oggetti et similia

The aim of this paper is to read and interpret once again the famous beginning of De Interpretatione, reconsidering the meaning of some basic Aristotelian terms such as, for instance,sýmbolon, sunth •kē and phōn •. The starting point is a book written by Franco Lo Piparo, Aristotele e il linguaggio, which gives many suggestions in this direction through a philological and comparative approach to many Aristotelian texts, not only those explicitly devoted to linguistic issues. The paper follows two main lines of analysis. The first pays particular attention to the role which Aristotle’s theory of linguistic articulation, focused on the term grámma, might have played in his semantics, and later on all grammatical theories. The second deals with the issues of reference and their possible influence on the modern debate: that of prâgma, considered not in the usual ontological way but in a semiotic way, and that of homoíōsis, whose translation by similarity involves several questions about iconism.