Abstract

The authors of mediaeval treatises on the modi significandi (often entitled De modis signi­ficandi, or Summa grammatica, or Summa modorum significandi, or Grammatica speculativa) have come to be known as the Modistae who taught in the late Sixties of the 13th till the Thirties of the 14th centuries. The present study is an account of the grammatical theories of this group of mediaeval scholars (mostly the work of Thomas of Erfurt), set in the appropriate context of situation and seen in terms of the part they played in mediaeval semiotic theory, since their theory rests on the study of words and the properties of these words as signs of things. At the end of the present study the influence of the speculative grammar on present linguistic theories is announ­ced. Some influence of the speculative grammar one could discover in many contemporary lin­gui­stic theories like those of Noam Chomsky, Ronald Langacker, Robin Lakoff and even Ray Jackendoff