Giles of Rome and the modists on signification and language

Giles of Rome developed his personal positions about signification in general and linguistic signification in particular discussing contemporary or immediately preceding authors’ views; Robert Kilwardby, Albert the Great and probably various authors of the Modistic milieu worked out their positions, both in grammatical and logical writings, in the years before the composition of Giles’ exposition on the Sophistical Refutations (ca. 1274). In what follows, I shall first sketch Giles’ positions on signs and linguistic signification, then show how his discussions about homonymy are linked to contemporary debates, and finally point to some of Giles’ positions that were discussed, criticized and sometimes misunderstood by later Modists, such as Simon of Faversham, the Anonymous of Prague and Radulphus Brito, in their commentaries on the Sophistical Refutations around the end of XIIIth century.