In logic, a categorical proposition, or categorical statement, is a proposition that asserts or denies members of one category (the subject term)

as belonging to another (the predicate term).[1] The study of arguments using categorical statements (i.e., syllogisms) forms an important branch of deductive reasoning that began with the Ancient Greeks. The Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle identified four primary distinct types of categorical proposition and gave them standard forms (now often called A, E, I, and O). If, abstractly, the subject category is named S and the predicate category is named P, the four standard forms are: All S are P. (A form) No S are P. (E form) Some S are P. (I form) Some S are not P. (O form) A surprisingly large number of sentences may be translated into one of these canonical forms while retaining all or most of the original meaning of the sentence. Greek investigations resulted in the socalled square of opposition, which codifies the logical relations among the different forms; for example,

that an A-statement is contradictory to an O-statement. Such relations may allow immediate inference, whereby the truth or falsity of one of the forms may follow directly from the truth or falsity of a statement in another form. Modern understanding of categorical propositions (originating with the mid-19th century work of George Boole) requires one to consider if the subject category may be empty. If so, this is called the hypothetical viewpoint, in opposition to the existential viewpoint which requires the subject category to have at least one member. The existential viewpoint is a stronger stance than the hypothetical and, when it is appropriate to take, it allows one to deduce more results than otherwise could be made. The hypothetical viewpoint has the effect of removing some of the relations present in the traditional square of opposition. Arguments consisting of exactly three categorical propositions two as premises and one as conclusion are known as categorical syllogisms and were of paramount importance from the times of ancient Greek logicians through the Middle Ages. Although formal arguments using categorical syllogisms have largely given way to the increased expressive power of modern logic systems like the first-order predicate calculus, they still retain practical value in addition to their historic and pedagogical significance.

Modal logic is a type of formal logic primarily developed in the 1960s that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressingmodality. Modalswords that express modalitiesqualify a statement. For example, the statement "John is happy" might be qualified by saying that John isusually happy, in which case the term "usually" is functioning as a modal. The traditional alethic modalities, or modalities of truth, include possibility("Possibly, p", "It is possible that p"), necessity ("Necessarily, p", "It is necessary that p"), and impossibility ("Impossibly, p", "It is impossible that p"). Other modalities that have been formalized in modal logic include temporal modalities, or modalities of time (notably, "It was the case that p", "It has always been that p", "It will be that p", "It will always be that p"),
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deontic modalities (notably, "It is obligatory that p", and "It is permissible that
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p"), epistemicmodalities, or modalities of knowledge ("It is known that p") modalities of belief ("It is believed that p").
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and doxastic modalities, or

A formal modal logic represents modalities using modal operators. For example, "It might rain today" and "It is possible that rain will fall today" both contain the notion of possibility. In a modal logic this is represented as an operator, Possibly, attached to the sentence "It will rain today". The basic unary (1-place) modal operators are usually written for Necessarily and for Possibly. In a classical modal logic, each can be expressed by the other with negation:

Thus it is possible that it will rain today if and only if it is not necessary that it will not rain today; and it is necessary that it will rain today if and only if it is not possible that it will not rain today. Alternative symbols used for the modal operators are "L" for Necessarily and "M" for Possibly