Ockham's Supposition Theory And It's Extention In Modern Logic Of Language

Ockham's supposition theory was the most advances among medieval theories of supposition. He has divided language into spoken language, written language and mental language, the first two of which were known as natural language while the third was called mental language. Ockham has done detailed analysis on both the two kinds of language.We try to reconstruct Ockham's supposition theory conceptually to reveal the particular division of supposition by Ockham, then discuss the semantic rules given by Ockham and show its perfect combination with modern logic. At the same time, we have pointed out some problems in the theory of supposition, including the ambiguity with some concepts, limitations on research objects and the puzzle resulting from the supposition in mental language. At the end, we will show the influence of Ockham's supposition theory on modern logic of language, bring it into modern logic of language, and formalize Ockham's supposition theory.