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How can language undermine or support my efforts for clarity?
From: Augustine, de dialectica, here translated by J. Marchand
Page 4
But if it either confounds the hearer or the reader, if it is either from art or usage that it comes, what happened to the third type which was named? Its example will appear more clearly in a sentence: "Many wrote in the dactylic meter, e. g. Tullius." Here it is uncertain as to whether 'Tullius' is cited as an example of a dactylic foot or a dactylic poet, of which the first is perceived by art, the second by usage. But in simple words it happens when the teacher pronounces the word to his students, as we have shown above.
These three types differ among themselves by manifest reasons. The first is again divided into two parts. Whatever makes an ambiguity through the art of words can partly be an example and partly not. When I define what a noun is, I can cite (supponere) it itself as an example (idempotency, Tr.). For the 'nomen' (noun) which I pronounce is itself a noun, and is so inflected, when we say: 'nomen, nominis, nomini', etc. Likewise when I define what a 'dactylus' is, it itself can be an example. For when we say 'dactylus', we pronounce one long syllable and then two short ones. But when we say what 'adverb' means, we cannot cite it as an example. When we say 'adverb' this very enunciation is a noun. Thus, according to one way of understanding it is adverb and a noun is a noun, according to another 'adverb' is not an adverb, since it is noun. Also 'creticus' (a type of foot), when we define it, cannot be given as an example (of itself). When we pronounce it, 'creticus' consists of one long syllable followed by two short ones, but what it signifies is a long, a short, and a long. Thus, according to one way of understanding 'creticus' is nothing other than a creticus, according to another, it is not a creticus, because it is a dactylus.
The second type, which pertains not to verbal discipline, but to usage, has two forms. Equivoca are either of the same origin or of different origins. I mention those of the same origin which are contained in one name (designation), but not one definition, but derive as it were from one source, e.g. when 'Tullius' can be understood as a man and a statue and a codex and a cadaver. For these cannot be contained in one definition, but they have one single source, i.e. the real man himself, whose statue, books, cadaver they are. But when we say 'nepos', it signifies from a quite diverse origin, both the son of the son and the spendthrift (Tr.: According to Isidore 'nepos' (spendthrift) comes from a kind of scorpion).
Cf. Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet | Plato, Whom are we talking to? | Kierkegaard, My work as an author | Emerson, Self-knowledge | Gibson - McRury, Discovering one's face | Emerson, We differ in art, not in wisdom | Joyce, Portrait of the Artist
