Existential Sentences Research Articles

Existential Sentences and Negation in Russian

Existential Sentences and Negation in Russian

‘Exists’ is a Predicate

i. It is commonplace to claim that existence is not a property: to claim that the expressions 'exists(s)', 'there is', and 'there are' are not logically predicates, and do not ascribe properties to objects, or describe them. It is a way out of Plato's beard, the supposition that to say anything of an object, even that it does not exist, requires the existence of a logical subject of predication, in particular, of the predication of non-existence. A classic presentation of this solution occurred in the famous symposium between Kneale and Moore in I936. Moore was led to claim that if one were to point at something, and, so pointing, say 'This exists', what one did 'would not express a proposition at all, but would be absolutely meaningless'.1 Here, pointing at an object and using 'this' as the (grammatical) subject of predication was taken as a paradigm of referring to something. Yet within a page, Moore admitted that 'This exists' must be meaningful, apparently without retracting his previous claim. For the meaningfulness of 'This exists' was taken to be a necessary condition of that of 'This might not have existed', which, it seemed to Moore, could clearly be said with truth of any object. One suggestion he threw out on the final page in explanation, was that Russell was wrong to suppose that 'this' is used in such a sentence as a 'proper name' for something with which we are acquainted (ibid., p. i88). Moore did not elaborate this idea, that in existential sentences the grammatical subject does not refer-is not a 'proper name'. Perhaps the difference between existence statements and others does not lie in their grammatical predicate but in their subject. Is it the subject, and not the predicate, of existential statements, which has a special role? Can we find grounds for claiming that 'Pegasus' is not logically a subject in, and Pegasus is not the logical subject of, 'Pegasus exists'?

Denial, contradiction and truth-value gaps

Since Russell gave his theory of definite descriptions and Strawson reacted to it in his famous "On Referring", the issue of truth-value gaps has never ceased to occupy the attention of philosophers. Strawson questioned the orthodox conformity of Russellian analysis to the traditional logic, particularly to the law of excluded middle. What, for Russell, was part of the meaning of a proposition like "the present monarch of the U.S.A. is honest", is only a presupposition for Strawson. That there is a monarch of the U.S.A. at present, is on Russellian analysis, one of the things asserted by this proposition and thus its falsity is sufficient to make the whole proposition false, whereas on Strawsonian analysis this existential sentence is presupposed, and in a very special sense implied, by the proposition in question, and therefore its falsity, instead of making the proposition false, makes the very question of its falsity out of place. For Strawson if a presupposition of a proposition is false, the question of its truth or falsity does not arise, and hence the proposition is neither true nor false. Obviously, such a possibility is not admitted by the law of excluded middle, and if it is regarded as genuine, as Strawson does, then the taw of excluded middle (LEM) will have to be given up. Such 'exceptions' to the LEM are called the cases of 'truth-vahie gaps'. That a proposition like "the present monarch of the U.S.A. is honest" (M) or like "the third World War has stopped" (W) is un-true, is undisputed. What is disputed is whether it is not false as well. Strawson's main reason for saying that it is false neither, is that a proposition is false if and only if its opposite is true. But

On the Syntax of Be-Sentences in Russian: A Review Article

these constructions. The topic has also led the author into a wide-ranging exploration of Russian syntax and of grammatical theory in its application to Russian. The results are fortunate indeed. The book is uniquely suited for use in introductory courses on the structure of Russian or for scholars who wish to familiarize themselves with transformationalist methodology. In addition, anyone already working on Russian syntax will find the book useful not only because of its analysis of BE-sentences, but also as a general reference to recent work. The book thus offers rather more than its modest title suggests. The work contains five chapters, the first introducing the aims, methodology, and theoretical foundation of the research, and the last serving as an epilogue. Chapter Two treats the question of whether byt' should be analyzed in the same manner in all sentences or whether there exist both an existential verb and a copular form. Chvany summarizes earlier discussion of this well-worn topic, concluding that there are two kinds of byt' which are not in complementary distribution (and which are therefore not contextually conditioned variants) and which can be defined according to certain criteria (summarized in a table on page 53). Both kinds of BE-sentences occur with and without est '. However, its appearance in existential sentences is impossible if the existence of the subject is presupposed, whereas in copular sentences the existence of the subject is always presupposed, and its appearance is therefore obviously not correlated with presupposition. Instead, est' is introduced to carry mild stress on truth value (lingvistika est'nauka), to carry sentence stress, and to emphasize present tense (160). Chvany proposes deep structures for sentences containing each kind of byt' and also presents a taxonomy of sentences containing copular byt ' She discusses treatment of tense as a feature of the verb, and comments on some hitherto unnoticed facts about the future forms in bud-. Chapter Three deals with sentences containing byt' and prepositional phrases with u, for example: U Borisa est' kniga. U nego net samovara. Chvany concludes that the locational sense of prepositional phrases with u is distinct from the possessive one, and she proposes derivations corresponding to each meaning. She claims that the predominance of the possessive over the locational meaning corresponds to the possessive's simpler deep structure, whereas the locational u involves an additional level of embedding. She also shows parallels with the transitive/intransitive pair irnet '/imet 'sja. Chapter Four is more abstract than the earlier chapters, offering a transformational account of the data, with a set of ordered rules to derive sentences from the deep structures proposed in Chapter Two.

Discontinuous noun phrases in existential sentences in English and German

In Kirkwood (1970) I noted that in the passivization of a sentence such as: (i) They issued a report on recent developments. i.e. (2) A report was issued on recent developments. a prepositional phrase on recent developments, which appears in some way to be attached to the subject noun phrase a report, may be detached from it in surface structure and placed after the verb. A similar phenomenon was observed in equivalent German sentences. Compare:

The -ING form revisited

Recent views concerning the grammatical status of ‘ING sentences’ (e.g. Listening with me was an Argentine) are critically examined by the author in the light of evidence presented in an earlier study of his. It is claimed that the affinities of such sentences to existential (‘ there be’) sentences in particular must be taken into account in formulating their transformational history.

Corrigendum to my paper: ``Recognizable algebras of formulas''.

By constructing a counterexample Martin Ziegler has shown that Theorems 1 and 2 are incorrect in the paper Recognizable algebras of formulas, this Journal, Volume XIII (1972), pp. 521-526. The proof given in the paper breaks down unless only existential (or universal) formulas are considered about recognizable algebras of formulas. We explain the problem where (as in the counterexample) -C = -Cωω and there is one alternation of quantifiers. Suppose that we are given a recognizable algebra of formulas R, sentences JΊ = (3yι)(3y2)J(yι,y2)f J2 = (V^i)(3y2)c/(^u3 2) in the language of R and 51 =«$. Let the translation of J(yi,y2) be J*(Yι, Y2) in the proof of Theorem 1. Then it is claimed in the proof that R(5l) 1= JΊ iff there exists an allowable ψ1 and there exists an allowable ψ2 such that 511= J*(ψi,ψ2). Also R(*S) N J under the same condition. Thus R(5l)NJi iff R(^)NJi and so the proof goes through for existential sentences. But it is also claimed in the proof that R(5ί)l=J2 iff for every allowable ψj_ there exists an allowable ψ2 such that 51 NJ*(ψi,ψ2) This claim is incorrent. For notice the implicit assumption that given a ψx there exists a unique ψ2 such that 51 N J*{ψuψ2). However ψx by the use of different sequences of parameters of 51 may define many elements of R(5l). Then there need not exist a unique ψ2 such that % f=J*(ψi,ψ2) even though R(S0hJ2.

Existential Sentences: A Linguistic Universal?

According to this analysis, the sentence above is derived from A tiger was in the corral, which has the deep structure form NP + VP. Other examples of sentences that this analysis seems to handle satisfactorily are There is a letter on the table and There will be two cars in every garage. I will presently return to a consideration of such sentences, which I will refer to as type 1. If all existential sentences transformed so easily from one structure to the other, this analysis would be sufficient. However, even the briefest examination of English reveals weaknesses in the analysis. The very suggestion that existential sentences can be accommodated within an analysis of English as transformations of an NP + VP sentence is doubtful, in view of the examples that follow. Not only is the existential sentence a widely used alternative for many other sentence structures, but it is the only possible form for one semantic structure. Actually, the type-1 existential sentence is the only kind that is satisfactorily handled as an optional transformation of an NP 1VP

Sentences with Be, Exist, and Have in Chinese

The group of sentences called existential sentences in Chinese, containing the main verbs sh 'to be', zdi 'to exist, be present', and yJu 'to have' are examined. Their relatedness in syntax and semantics is explored, as revealed by the kinds of noun phrases which occur in these sentences and by the co-occurrence conditions of the three verbs. Six general observations on the properties of these sentences are substantiated. It is clear that the occurrence of the three verbs is closely related to the status and position of the NP's. The verbs are also individually selectable and transformationally introducible into these existential sentences. It is finally proposed that the three verbs are variant representations of a single Chinese verb in such sentences. The NP's in these sentences are also discussed in terms of their syntactic functions and characteristics such as definiteness and anaphoricness.*

A Critical Examination of Russell's View of Facts

Recent advances in semantics have reopened certain ontological problems that have lain dormant since the heyday of logical atomism. More specifically, interest has been rekindled in the problem of facts, their nature and function, especially as related to theories of truth. For examples, see [1] and [2]. In the light of this, it seems very instructive to reconsider Bertrand Russell's views concerning facts from the viewpoint of modern semantic theory. main things at issue, from a contemporary point of view, are, first, whether the semantic conception of truth, or any other aspects of modem semantics require a fact ontology at all, and second, if they do, what sort of facts are required. Russell had things to say on both points, but this paper will concern itself only with his views on the second. All of Russell's views considered here are to be found in, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism,' and must be contrasted with both his earlier and later views. In short, he argued that in addition to the need for facts to correspond to true atomic sentences, special facts were also needed to correspond to negative, universal and existential sentences. alleged existence of these three types of facts seemed objectionable to many at the time and caused considerable controversy. It seems likely that the failure of Russell and his followers to satisfactorily resolve this controversy was one of the main reasons why the ontological problems involved in logical atomism, particularly those concerning facts, fell slowly into disrespect. It was not so much that Russell's theory, or those of

Equational Clauses in Bengali

1. In many languages there are clause types characterized by the presence of a subject and complement without an element of predication such as a verb 'to be'. Clauses of this kind, which may be termed equational, display a number of similarities across languages. Frequently there is a special negative copula; in tenses other than the present, a verb 'to be' is sometimes required; word order may differ from that of nonequational clauses. Hence full descriptions of equational clauses in a variety of languages of differing structure and genetic relationship might be of value in determining synchronic and diachronic universals of syntax. The present study attempts to provide such a description for Standard Colloquial Bengali (hereafter SCB)1 and to describe the characteristics which distinguish equational from existential clauses, a similar type in which a copula does occur. The research was carried out with the assistance of two native speakers of SCB. The initial work was conducted with Mr. Satya Sarkar, a graduate of the University of Calcutta and presently a graduate student in ceramic engineering at the University of Washington. More intensive research was carried on with Mrs. Nilima Kar, who has received an M.A. from the University of Calcutta in Bengali language and literature.

Persistence and Herbrand expansions

Following Robinson [3], we say that a first-order sentence S is persistent with respect to a set of sentences K if, whenever S is true in a model M of K, then S is true in every extension of M that is also a model of K. Robinson proved in [3] that:(T) In order that the sentence S be persistent with respect to the set K it is necessary and sufficient that there be some existential sentence Y such that the sentence S↔Y is deducible from K.

Existential Horn sentences

A. Horn [2] has shown that every sentence of a certain class, which we define precisely below, is true in a direct product of algebras whenever it is true in each component algebra. McKinsey [4] had already shown essentially that every universal sentence preserved under direct product is equivalent to one of these Horn sentences. We establish here the analogous result for existential sentences. This answers a question raised by Chang and Morel [1], who showed that the parallel result does not hold for universal-existential sentences. The problem for existential-universal sentences remains open. An algebraic system A will be taken to consist of a nonempty set of elements, upon which are defined various operations, and various relations in addition to equality. Thus A is a model for a first order language L with symbols for the operations and relations of A. (For details, see [3 ].) Only those models will be considered in which the equality symbol is interpreted by a relation having the usual formal properties of equality-that is, by a congruence on the algebra A; but we do not require that the equality symbol be interpreted by strict identity. The direct product of similar algebras, that is, models for the same language, is defined in the usual way. Under this definition the direct product of an empty set of algebras is a trivial algebra, in which all relations, including equality, are universal. A transformation of the prenex conjunctive normal form shows that every formula of L is equivalent to a conditional formula, of the form

The Existential Sentence and Inversion of the Subject in Spanish

The Existential Sentence and Inversion of the Subject in Spanish