For Abelard, there is not really a problem of universals, but three different, related ones. The first is the problem posed by the question: are there any universal things? It has been explained here already that Abelard is sure that the answer is negative. He may have been predisposed to this view because of the special way (in voce exegesis) he had learned, as a young logician, to interpret the Categories and Isagoge. But he is able to support it by a series of arguments in the Logica (sup.Por. 10: 17–16: 18) and the Glossulae (513: 15 – 522: 9) to show that each of the various ways in which his contemporaries held that there are universal things leads to contradiction. These arguments have been carefully analysed by modern scholars and need no further commentary. Abelard considers that, if there are no universal things, universals must be words. This leaves him with two further problems. The first, on which he concentrates most of his attention, is a problem about semantics. Abelard holds that every thing is particular, but he also recognizes that our language and thinking depend heavily on universals. In statements such as ‘Socrates is a man’ and ‘Plato is white’, the predicates ‘man’ and ‘white’ signify universals. But how can they do so if there are no universals? Using his theory of cognition as a basis, Abelard develops a sophisticated answer to this question in the Logica, which he revises in the Glossulae and De intellectibus in line with his new analysis of imagining and thinking.