SEMANTICS SUMMARY

UNIT 12 AND 13

by

Wening Nur Habibah Alif

0203519086

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
UNIVERSITAS NEGERI SEMARANG
2020
 UNIT 12 ABOUT LOGIC

LOGIC deals with meanings in a language system, not with actual behavior of any sort. Logic
deals most centrally with PROPOSITIONS. The terms ‘logic’ and ‘logical’ do not apply directly
to UTTERANCES (which are instances of behavior).

For example:

Goal : to alleviate my hunger

Assumptions and knowledge : Hunger is alleviated by eating food.
Cheese is food.
There is a piece of cheese in front of me.
I am able to eat this piece of cheese.
(Rational) action : eating the cheese

Example
John and Mary are married is ambiguous, being paraphrasable either as:
John and Mary are married to each other or as
John is married to someone and Mary is married to someone

MODUS PONENS is a rule stating that if a proposition P entails a proposition Q, and P is true,
then Q is true. Put in the form of a diagram,
Modus Ponens looks like this:
PQ
P
Q

Logic deals with meanings in a language system (i.e. with propositions, etc.), not with
actual behavior, although logical calculations are an ingredient of any rational behavior. A
system for describing logical thinking contains a notation for representing propositions
unambiguously and rules of inference defining how propositions go together to make up valid
arguments. Because logic deals with such very basic aspects of thought and reasoning, it can
sometimes seem as if it is ‘stating the obvious’. The thing to remember is that one is not, in the
end, interested in individual particular examples of correct logical argument (for, taken
individually, such examples are usually very obvious and trivial), but rather in describing the
whole system of logical inference, i.e. one is trying to build up a comprehensive account of all
logical reasoning, from which the facts about the individual examples will follow automatically.
One only looks at individual examples in order to check that the descriptive system that one is
building does indeed match the facts. Logic, with its emphasis on absolute precision, has a
fascination for students who enjoy a mental discipline. Thus, in addition to its contribution to our
understanding of the ‘Laws of Thought’, it can be good fun.
 UNIT 13 A NOTATION FOR SIMPLE PROPOSITIONS

Logic provides a notation for unambiguously representing the essentials of propositions.

Logic has in fact been extremely selective in the parts of language it has dealt with; but the parts
it has dealt with it has treated in great depth.
We assume that simple propositions, like simple sentences, have just one predicator
(recall Unit 5), which we write in CAPITAL LETTERS. The arguments of the predicator we
represent by single lower-case letters, putting one of these letters before the predicator (like the
subject of an English sentence) and the others (if there are others) after the predicator, usually in
the preferred English word order. Anything that is not a predicator or a referring expression is
simply omitted from logical notation.
Example
Abraham died would be represented by the formula a DIE
Fido is a dog by f DOG
Ted loves Alice by t LOVE a
Phil introduced Mary to Jack by p INTRODUCE m j

Tense (e.g. past, present) is not represented in our logical formulae, and neither is any
form of the verb be.We also omit the word than in comparative sentences like that in (1)
immediately above.
Example : It’s raining ≠ It was raining

Besides its use as a ‘carrier’ of tense, the verb be sometimes expresses the identity predicate, and
sometimes makes no contribution to the sense of a sentence at all that is relevant for determining
the truth value of the proposition expressed by the sentence.
Clark Kent is Superman ck = s
Clark Kent is a reporter ck REPORTER

Every SIMPLE proposition is representable by a single PREDICATOR, drawn from the

predicates in the language, and a number of ARGUMENTS, drawn from the names in the
language. This implies, among other things, that no formula for a simple proposition can have
TWO (or more) predicators, and it cannot have anything which is neither a predicate nor a name.
Example
j LOVE m is a well-formed formula for a simple proposition
j m is not a well-formed formula, because it contains no predicator
j IDOLIZE ADORE m is not a well-formed formula for a simple proposition, because it contains
two predicators
j and h LOVE m is not a well-formed formula for a simple proposition because it contains
something (‘and’) which is neither a predicator nor a name.

We have presented a logical notation for simple propositions. A well-formed formula for
a simple proposition contains a single predicator, drawn from the predicates in the language, and
a number of arguments, drawn from the names in the language. The notation we have given
contains no elements corresponding to articles such as a and the, certain prepositions, and certain
instances of the verb be, as these make no contribution to the truth conditions of the sentences
containing them. We have also, for convenience only, omitted any representation of tense in our
logical formulae. The introduction of a notation for propositions (to be refined in subsequent
units) fills a gap left empty since Unit 2, where we introduced a way of representing sentences
and utterances, but not propositions. We now have (the beginnings of) a way of representing
items at all three levels:
Utterance Sentence Proposition
‘Jesus wept’ Jesus wept j WEEP