The Structure of Sentential Logic

Objectives
• Distinguish between simple and compound
sentences and be able to identify the simple
components of compound sentences.
• Learn the definitions of sentential operator,
compound sentence, and simple sentence
• Learn five sentential operators and the
symbols for them
• Learn how compound formulas are
constructed out of more elementary parts
 Compound Sentence
• It contains another complete declarative
sentence as a component
Compound or not?
1. John loves Mary and Mary loves David.
2. The person who ate the cake has a guilty
conscience.
3. John went to New York and Mary went to New
York.
4. Mary will be a good student or a good tennis
player.
 Compound Sentences
• Sentences with compound subjects and/or
compound predicates will be considered
compound if they can be paraphrased into
sentences that are explicitly compound.
• One sentence contains another if it literally
contains the other as a component or it can
be paraphrased into an explicitly compound
sentence.
 Cases when you cannot tell whether
the sentence is genuinely compound
or just stating a relationship
• John and Mary are married

• The art of paraphrasing is not exact

 The ff. Sentences are all simple
• Jose is happy.
• Dogs like bones.
• Children fight a lot.
• Keith likes bananas on his porridge.
• The man standing by the door is a doctor.
• The President liked to have complete silence
during his many long, tedious speeches about
the virtues of democratic government,
The ff. Sentences are all compound
• Jose and Maria like cats.
• John likes cats and snakes.
• Harvey thinks that the earth is flat.
• If there are flying saucers, then fish live in
trees.
• Jose, Maria and Harvey like lobster and Big
Macs.
 A Sentential operator
• Is an expression containing blanks such that,
when the blanks are filled with complete
sentences, the result is a sentence.
• There are a lot of sentential operators in
English, although we will be using only 5 in
sentential logic.
 A Sentential operator in Logic
• Either _____ or _____
• Neither _____ nor _____
• _____ and _____
• If _____, then _____
• _____ if and only if _____
• _____ unless _____
• _____ after _____
• _____ only if _____
• _____ because _____
 5 Sentential operators

Operator Technical Name Meaning Example

 or  Negation Not  p Or p
, & or  Conjunction And pq
V Disjunction Or pvq
 or V Exclusive OR XOR pq
, → or  Conditional If ___ then ____ pq
Implication
, , iff or  Biconditional If and only if pq
 5 Sentential operators
• In p  q, p and q are called conjuncts.
• In p v q, p and q are called disjuncts.
• In p → q, p is the antecedent, q is the
consequent.
• Will use single capital letters to represent
simple English sentences.
 5 Sentential operators and ()
• Let P be P-Noy is president,
B be Binay is vice-president.
E be Erap is president.
M be Mar Roxas is vice-president.
• Convert these into symbols:
– Binay is vice-president and P-Noy is president.
– Erap or P-Noy is president.
– Binay is vice-president if and only if P-Noy is president.
– If Binay is vice-president, then P-Noy is president.
– Erap is not the president.
– Not both Erap and P-Noy are president.
– Either Erap is president and Binay is vice-president, or P-Noy is president and
Mar Roxas is vice-president.
– Mar Roxas is vice-president if and only if P-Noy is president.
• The necessary use of parentheses in arithmetic is as important its use in
logic.
 Some important terms
• Sub-formula – a meaningful formula that
occurs as a part of another formula.
• Major operator – the operator that
determines the overall form of the sentence,
and is the operator introduced last in the
process of constructing the formula from its
more elementary components.
 What is the major operator

• ((A  B) → (C v D))
• (((A  B) → (C v D)) v ((E F)  G))
• (((A  B) v ((C → D) v F)) → ((H  E) v C))
Do Worksheet 1