sophism ‘This is a dead man, therefore this is a man’), Roger was not content to distinguish words from all other signs as had been the tradition. He distinguished between signs originating from nature and from the soul, and between natural signification and conventional (ad placitum) signification which results expressly or tacitly from the imposition of meaning by one or more individuals. He maintained that words signify existing and non-existing entities only equivocally, because words conventionally signify only presently existing things. On this view, therefore, ‘man’ is not used univocally when applied to an existing man and to a dead man.
See also ARISTOTLE , GROSSETESTE , PETER LOMBAR. G.S.