ИСТИНА

Medieval conceptions of sound united physical knowledge, moral theories and aesthetic criteria. Despite its aspiration for classifying and importance of its acoustic features medieval culture did not create any particular vocabulary of musical terms till XV c. Reconstruction of vocabulary that includes all sound-descripting lexical items could be fruitful both for historians of culture, musicologists and linguists. In this presentation we will observe some of the most intriguing results of such reconstruction based on the specific kind of high medieval vocabularies – the derivational ones (from Papias to Gualtiero d'Ascoli). Derivational vocabulary combines grammatical and etymological information and examples of use in one definition and thus leaned on tradition of auctoritas as well as on modern school practices. As a result of analysis of terms that describe sound and sound actions in this kind of sources one can observe iterant references to the nature of sound that depends on actor's mind: his holding of ratio and intelligentia that could impart meaning even to the noise. Obviously references of that kind belong to huge development of semiotics in the High Middle Ages. We can find their roots in St. Augustin's theory of sign and observe their intimate connection with argument about universals and conceptions of language by Dante and Boethius of Dacia. How inarticulate voice may have a meaning, in which situations noise becomes a signal, do animals have language – medieval answers to these questions will be observed in the following presentation.