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Home , Logical disjunction

Squib topic

-Due: March 7, 2002 - + Cruse, Alan. 2000. Meaning in language. An introduction to and . Oxford: OUP Kiss, Katalin. 1991. Logical structure in syntactic structure: the case of Hungarian. In Logical structure and syntactic structure, ed. James Huang and Robert May, 111-148. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analytic vs synthetic sentences The cherry tree is in blossom. Bachelors are unmarried. All green frogs are green. Oil floats on water. This paint is read. Which sentences are analytically true?

1 Bachelors are married.

Why is this sentence a paradox/?

Hint: Bachelors are unmarried-analytically true sentence.

Exercises with logical

Mary is happy and John is sad.

1. When is this compound true? Draw the for this sentence. 2. What is the formal representation of this compound proposition?

2

It is not the case that the moon is made of green cheese. Alice is a child and Alice is not a child. 1. What is the truth table for negation? 2. Why is the compound “Alice…” always ?

Disjunction

William has gone to play tennis or Martha has gone to her violin lesson.

1. What is the difference between and natural or? T T T and/or

3 Material implication

Antecedent Conditional If you wash the car I will take you out for lunch. 1. What is the formal representation of this compound sentence?

2. What happens if the antecedent is false and the conditional is true?

F T T

• If the world is flat then London is the capital of England. • If ice sinks in water then whales are fish.

4 Biconditional

I will take you out for luch if, and only if, you wash the car.

When is this sentence false?

Entailment

1.It’s sunny and Tommy has four tickets for the test match. (p)

2. Tommy has four tickets for the test match. (q)

A.What happens if p is false?-q is either true or false B.What happens if p is true? -q is always true . What happens if q is false?-p is always false According to the definition of entailment given earlier, p entails q. (p —> q)

5 A. Fifi is a dog.

B. Fifi barks. B. Fifi is an animal.-entailment B. Fifi has four legs. B. Fifi is brown.

A. John killed the wasp

B. The wasp was killed by John.-(mutual) entailment B. The wasp is dead.-entailment B. The wasp is not dead.

A. It is a cat. B. It is an animal.-entailment But not viceversa!

Semantic

1. Have you stopped watching daytime TV yet? 2. John regrets sending a defamatory e-mail to the whole list. 3. The workers knew that the management were lying. 4. John read the article before he went down the pub. 1, What is the presupposition trigger for each sentence? 2. What is presupposed in each sentence? 3. Does the presupposition go through if we substitute ‘knew’ with ‘believe’ in sentence #3? 4. Try negating any of these sentences. Are the preserved?

6 and presupposition: changes in focus (and intonation) affect presupposition 1. Alice loved HARRY. 2. ALICE loved Harry. 1. There is an x, such that Alice loved x (presupposition) X=Harry. 2. There is an X, such that x loved Harry. (presupposition) X=Alice.

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