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Ὄνομα μὲν οὖν ἐστι φωνὴ σημαντικὴ κατὰ συνθήκην ἄνευ χρόνου, ἧς μηδὲν μέρος ἐστὶ σημαντικὸν κεχωρισμένον:19 Naming, however, is an utterance that is meaningful on the basis of an agreement, without referring to time as such in naming. It is simultaneously a φωνὴ σημαντική, a totality of sounds, of which no individual part taken by itself means anything. Aristotle illustrates this characteristic by referring to the Greek name Kallippos, in German Schönpferd [beautiful horse]. The individual syllables and parts of the whole word mean nothing when taken by themselves in this context, because the unitary name in itself also has a unitary meaning: what is referred to is a particular human being with this name, whereas καλὸς ἵππος is a λόγος insofar as the word can be broken down into the statement: The horse is beautiful. Here the individual parts of the λόγος in each case mean something by themselves. Much more essential to this interpretation of naming is that Aristotle says that naming is a meaning without time. How he understands this we can see from the opposing definition of the second component of the λόγος, namely ῥῆμα. Ῥῆμα δέ ἐστι τὸ προσσημαῖνον χρόνον, οὗ μέρος οὐδὲν σημαίνει χωρίς, καὶ ἔστιν ἀεὶ τῶν καθ’ ἑτέρου λεγομένων σημεῖον:20 A saying, a verb, is what refers to time in addition, something to whose essence it belongs to refer to time in addition, namely in addition to what is otherwise referred to in the verb; it is always a meaning which is meaningful in such a way as to be related to whatever is being spoken about. In accordance with its intrinsic meaning, every verb is thus concerned with something that the discourse is about, something underlying as a being, as such and such a being. Thus we can see that the ῥῆμα is distinguished from the ὄνομα by the criterion of time. Although Aristotle did not pursue this any further, there is indeed a quite decisive insight here. The two essential elements characterising the verb are that it also refers to time, and in its meaning is always related to something that the discourse is about, namely to beings. This indicates that all positing of beings is necessarily related to time. In keeping with this, we therefore call the verb a time-word [Zeitwort] in German. These are the two structural moments of the λόγος which are important for the problem we are about to meet.
If every assertion is therefore a pointing out of beings according to what and how they are, then in such propositional discourse there is somehow always necessarily discourse concerning the being of beings—whether of being now, having been, or coming to be. The fact that there is discourse concerning beings in their being in the assertion is expressed linguistically by the 'is'. Yet even where the latter is lacking—the board sits badly, the bird flies away—the ῥῆμα (verb) not
19. Ibid., Chap. 2, 16a 19f.
20. Ibid., Chap. 3, 16b 6ff.