A proposition is in some sense the semantic guts
of a sentence. It is the semantic part of the sentence that has
a true/false value. David Crystal defines a proposition:Intermediate Syntax
Contents: predicate | argument | operator | proposition |
A proposition is in some sense the semantic guts
of a sentence. It is the semantic part of the sentence that has
a true/false value. David Crystal defines a proposition:
The unit of meaning which constitutes the subject matter of a state, and which is asserted to be true or false. It takes the form of a simple declarative sentence.
Propositions are part of conceptual structure. They are linked directly to phrases in the syntax of a given language.
Consider the following sentence:
(1) Bill dropped a cup.
This sentence is either true or it is false in the real world. However, the speaker is asserting that the sentence is true. Usually, a speaker utters a positive sentence with the intention of it being true, but of course a speaker can be lying. But the speaker is asserting that it is true.
The speaker asserts (1) to be true. Note that the sentence may or may not be true in the real world. Whether it is true is a matter of pragmatics. What we are interested in here is that it is an assertion. The speaker of (1) asserts that the propositional meaning of (1) is true.
A speaker may assert (1) to be false. He does this by negating the proposition:
(2) Bill did not drop a cup.
(2) may or may not be true in the real world, but the speaker asserts that the propositional meaning of (2) is false.
Now consider the following sentence that contains a conditional clause and a consequential clause:
(3) If Bill drops a cup, he will have to pay for it.
The conditional clause if if Bill drops a cup. This by itself is not an assertion of its truth value. It means that if the proposition becomes true at some point, then there will be a consequence: he will have to pay for it. The consequence is not an assertion either.
The next sentence contains a contrary-to-fact clause and a consequence:
(4) If Bill had dropped a cup, he would have had to pay for it.
The speaker asserts in (4) that Bill did not drop a cup, but if he had, he would have had to pay for it. The complementizer if heads both constructions, but the form of the verb changes.
And finally, the speaker may ask a question:
(5) Did Bill break a cup?
Here, the speaker is trying to obtain the information about the truth value of the basic proposition. Two possible answers are (1) or (2). Of course, the respondent could answer with:
(6) I don't know whether Bill broke the cup.
The only assertion is that the speaker does not know the answer to the question.
Negative questions tend to mark an expectation:
(7) Didn't Bill break a cup?
The speaker is trying to obtain the same information as in (5), but his expectation is that he thought Bill would have broken it, but he now thinks that perhaps Bill didn't.
Contents: predicate | argument
| operator | proposition
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