in the cases he mentioned, the term would be equivocal,” is answered as follows:
“What do you mean by an equivocal term? Do you mean lexical equivocity, as discussed in your book?” There, in your classification of terms, you said:
“A name is either one or multiple. If it is one, its concept can be classified in several ways.
“The first division: either its concept can be shared or it cannot. If the former, it is talabī.”
He completed this discussion with statements, some true and others false, in which he followed the logicians. He then said:
“If, however, its concept cannot be shared by many, it is a particular.”
He stated that this applies specifically to the proper name, and classified it according to the grammarians’ classification. He then said:
“If the name is one but its referents differ, either it was originally assigned to all of them in a literal sense, or it is used metaphorically for some of them. In the former case, it is equivocal, whether the referents are mutually distinct—as with al-jawn, meaning both blackness and whiteness—or not mutually distinct, as when we apply the name al-Aswad to someone both as a proper name and as a descriptive term derived from blackness. In the latter case, it is figurative.”
If this is what you mean, then an equivocal term is a single name whose referents differ and which was originally assigned to all of them in a literal sense. The classification here is that the referent is one, and the name is universal or particular, as you stated.
You are then answered:
“We do not concede that, if these names are literal in the cases mentioned, the term must be equivocal. For this classification only