  Conceptions of analysis in the medieval and renaissance periods were  largely influenced by ancient Greek conceptions. But knowledge of  these conceptions was often second-hand, filtered through a variety  of commentaries and texts that were not always reliable. Medieval and renaissance methodologies tended to be uneasy mixtures of Platonic,  Aristotelian, Stoic, Galenic and neo-Platonic elements, many of them  claiming to have some root in the geometrical conception of analysis  and synthesis. However, in the late medieval period, clearer and more original forms of analysis started to take shape. In the literature  on so-called ‘syncategoremata’ and  ‘exponibilia’, for example, we can trace the development  of a conception of interpretive analysis. Sentences involving more  than one quantifier such as ‘Some donkey every man sees’, for example, were recognized as ambiguous, requiring  ‘exposition’ to clarify.