I. Placement of the Concept (5)

3. The term

3.1. Notion

The concept, immanent fruit of the first operation, is a 'first intention', which is to say a being purely within the intellective order. Now because the human soul is substantially linked to the body, our concepts are always 'incarnate', so to speak, in a determinate language. For example, I cannot think the quiddity 'man' without at the same time expressing it, even if only internally, in a linguistic term - 'homo', 'man', 'uomo', 'hombre', 'homme', 'Mensch', etc.: there is never a thought without language spoken, written, or simply represented in the imagination. Between the written sign, the spoken word, and the intelligible concept arise the relations of meaning which Aristotle presents thusly:

Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images. Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias 1, 16 a 3-8

One sees that writing is an instrumental artificial sign for words, which are also instrumental artificial signs of concepts (mental experience [affections of the soul]), which are, as we have said, formal natural signs of things. On the one hand, writings and words change in history and space; concepts and essences of things, on the other hand, do not.

In this context, we can define the oral term (or written in reference to the oral) as

sound of the voice significative by convention. ("vox significativa ad placitum", Peri Hermeneias 2, 16 a 19)

Let us explain per partes:

- the sound of the voice is not just any noise, but a sound made by an animate living thing, and accompanied by some "mental experience" (De Anima B, 8, 420 b 25 - 31).

- this sound should bear some intentionality, which renders it meaningful, of the reality signified, by means of the concept. Note well that the concept is not known as such, since it is a formal sign.

- this meaningfulness is by convention and as such different from, for example, a groan or a cough.