What types of sentences did we

cover last week?

❑GENERIC SENTENCE
❑EQUATIVE SENTENCE
GENERIC SENTENCE

A GENERIC SENTENCE is a sentence in

which some statement is made
about a whole unrestricted class of
individuals, as opposed to any
particular individual.

The whale is a mammal (understood in the most usual

way) is a generic sentence.
That whale over there is a mammal is not a generic
sentence.
EQUATIVE SENTENCE

An EQUATIVE SENTENCE is one which is

used to assert the identity of the referents
of two referring expressions, i.e. to assert
that two referring expressions have the
same referent.

Tony Blair is the Prime Minister.

That woman over there is my daughter’s teacher.
More practice
More practice
LOGIC
UNIT 12
 01 DEFINITION

LOGIC V.S. RATIONAL

02
BEHAVIOUR
LOGICAL
03
CONTRADICTION
CONTENT
04 LOGICAL NOTATION
ENTRY TEST
ENTRY
TEST
ENTRY TEST
ENTRY
TEST

c&d
e
h
g
1. DEFINITION
LOGIC

❑ Logic is the study of the nature of valid inferences and

reasoning.
❑ The logical tradition constitutes one of the major strands in
the study of meaning, and some knowledge of its

background is indispensable in linguistic semantics.

LOGIC
❑ Logic deals with meanings in a language system, not with
actual behaviour (partial) of any sort. Logic deals most
centrally with PROPOSITIONS.
❑ The terms ‘logic’ and ‘logical’ do not apply directly to
UTTERANCES (which are instances of behaviour).
 2. LOGIC v.s.
RATIONAL BEHAVIOR
LOGIC v.s. RATIONAL BEHAVIOR
(a) goals

Rational (b) assumptions and knowledge about existing states of

behavior: affairs
(c) calculations, based on these assumptions and
knowledge, leading to ways of achieving the goals
 EXAMPLE
EATING THE CHEESE

Calculations: Goal: to alleviate my hunger

✓ If hunger is alleviated by eating food and
Assumptions and knowledge:
cheese is food, then hunger is alleviated by
eating cheese. • Hunger is alleviated by eating food.
✓ If hunger is alleviated by eating cheese,
• Cheese is food.
then my own hunger would be alleviated
by eating this piece of cheese in front of • There is a piece of cheese in front of me.
me, and eating this piece of cheese would
• I am able to eat this piece of cheese.
alleviate my hunger, and my goal is to
alleviate my hunger, so therefore eating
this piece of cheese would achieve my goal.
LOGIC v.s. RATIONAL BEHAVIOR
(a) goals

Rational (b) assumptions and knowledge about existing states of

behavior: affairs
(c) calculations, based on these assumptions and
knowledge, leading to ways of achieving the goals

Logic provides rules for calculation.

 3. LOGICAL
CONTRADICTION
 LOGICAL CONTRADICTION
All men are mortal and some men are not mortal.
SPECIAL WORDS: and, or, some, not, if…
SPECIAL WORDS: and, or, some, not, if…
 • Connectives: ‘connects’ individual
propositions with other
propositions
• no extension (set of all individuals
AND/OR
that a predicate can be applied)
• topic-free
4. LOGICAL
NOTATION
 • a specially developed way of
representing proposition
unambiguously
• will include a few special
Logical symbols, for example &, V, ~
notation
 Sentence: John and Mary are married.
Utterance: ‘John and Mary are married.’
Proposition:???

John and Mary are John is married to someone and

married to each other Mary is married to someone
 PROBLEM
Pairs of sentences with similar or identical
grammatical forms may sometimes have
different logical forms.

=> To state rules of calculation, or ‘rules of inference’,

completely systematically, these rules have to work on
representations of the logical form of sentences,
rather than on the grammatical forms of the
sentences.
 Comment
Generic sentences have a different logical form from non-generic
sentences.
=> The two sentence types express logically different types of
proposition.
=> Represented by different types of formulae in logical notation
A system of logic consists of two things:
✓a notation (in effect, a definition of all the possible proper
formulae in the system)
✓a set of rules (for ‘calculating’ with the formulae in various
ways)
 Comment
 The cases of valid argument here are examples of basic rules of
logical inference.
 The cases of invalid argument are examples of some well-
known logical fallacies.
 A rule stating that if a
proposition P entails a
proposition Q, and P is true,
then Q is true.

MODUS
PONEN premises of
the argument

conclusion of
the argument