This essay considers Duns Scotus’s arguments against the so-called semantic analogy—the view according to which a term can signify two or more things according to relations of priority and posteriority. It argues that this view was commonly adopted in Paris but was rejected by a group of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century English thinkers, which included Duns Scotus. Since supporters of semantic analogy held that ‘being’ was the foremost example of a term signifying according to priority and posteriority, the implications of this debate on metaphysics are profound. This essay's conclusion is that Duns Scotus’s rejection of semantic analogy should be considered as preliminary to his famous claim that being is a univocal concept.

In this chapter, we take a step back and consider a range of underlying concepts and metaphors that express something of what it means to participate, in or from another, and particularly to participate in or from God. 'Part of' language is found to have little value, while the idea of 'part in' is more promising. Notions of a limited reception from another have also been significant, as has the language of likeness. Two approaches are found to be particularly valuable: the idea of reception from a boundless source according to the distinct mode of being of the recipient, and the relation of source to recipient that is indicated by causation.

In the writing of Thomas Aquinas, and more widely, the metaphysics of participation goes hand in hand with an account of language set out in terms of analogy (and particularly in relation to religious language). The question of how human words can have the capacity to bear witness to God isacknowledged as a real and considerable problem. The response provided here comes from Aquinas: words that we have learned, in by use in relation to creatures, can have bearing for discussion of God (not least as given in revelation) because the perfections that we name in creatures are first, foundationally, and causally, in God. The approach summed up as 'analogy' is contrasted with two others: equivocity and univocity. An analogical approach to language is seen to be present in the scriptures. The chapter closes with a survey of some of the forms of analogy that were put forth in the High Middle Ages.