LOGIC AND LANGUAGE There is a further, related, question: What kind of thing is it that is true or false? Sentences, thoughts, and dicta can all be called true But which of these is the primary bearer of truth-values? The question is particularly pointed when we consider the relation between truth and time Some philosophers believe that all that we say in natural languages by the use of tensed sentences could be said in a logical language that contained no tenses but whose sentences contained timeless verbs plus an explicit temporal reference or quantiWcation over times Thus, a sentence ‘It will rain’ uttered at time t1 would on this view have to be understood as expressing a proposition to the following eVect: at some time t later than t1 it rains (timelessly) It is still a matter of debate whether such a translation of tensed sentences into timeless propositions can be carried out without loss of content In the Middle Ages there was little enthusiasm for such translation Most commonly, enuntiabilia no less than sentences were regarded as tensed Consequently, both sentences and enuntiabilia could change their truthvalues Aristotle was frequently quoted as saying that one and the same sentence ‘Socrates is sitting’ is true when Socrates is sitting and false when he gets up.11 The nearest approximation to timeless propositions in the thought of medieval logicians was a disjunction of tensed propositions Thus it was sometimes suggested that there was a single object of faith in which Hebrew prophets and Christian saints alike believed, namely, the proposition ‘Christ will be born or Christ is born or Christ has been born’.12 The thirteenth-century logic manuals contained, in addition to discussions of terms and propositions, substantial sections on the theory of Medieval students learned their logical mnemonics in a classroom such as this 11 This issue was discussed particularly in connection with God’s timeless knowledge of events in time; see Ch below 12 See G Nuchelmans, ‘The Semantics of Propositions’, in CHLMP 202 134