Word meaning and syntactic connection as Modistae forms

Like many other ^13th-century philosophers, the Modistae placed meaning in the category of relationship. They take the distinction between natural and conventional/arbitrary meaning as a given, and focus on the conventional aspect in developing their theory of modi significandi. The meaning of words and the syntactic connection between pairs of words are considered to be relations of a special kind: they are asymmetrical relations, i.e. unilateral relations based on a subject (or term of the relation per se); they have no corresponding relation of the same kind on the part of the other term of the relation, but only an accidental relation(per accidens). Before the end of the ^13th century, Raoul le Breton modified this conception: while he adhered to the traditional theory in his commentary on the Metaphysics and in a first version of the commentary on the Categories, he then developed, in his commentary on the Priscian Minor, a theory of meaning and syntactic connection as forms, abandoning the distinction between relation per se and per accidens. This modification enables Raoul le Breton to reformulate the relationships between modi significandi, modi intelligendi and modi essendi, in relation to the model developed by Martin of Dacia.