SEMANTICS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES

UNIT 2. TRUTH-CONDITIONAL SEMANTICS I UPV/EHU

UNIT 2. TRUTH-CONDITIONAL SEMANTICS I

➢ Aims of this unit

This unit introduces the student to truth-conditional semantics and propositional logic.

➢ Learning outcomes

At the end of this unit successful students will

• Understand what is meant by the truth value of a sentence,

• Be able to represent negation, conjunction and disjunction,
• Be able to define logically the notions of contradiction and tautology.

1. Truth and meaning

In the Introduction we mentioned the external significance of language (cf. Unit 1,

Section 2). This notion is connected with the idea that we use language to convey
information to others, and this is made possible because a) we know the meanings of
sentences, and b) we can decide whether the meaning expressed by a sentence is
matched by the extra-linguistic reality, that is, we can tell if the sentence is true or false.

We can illustrate this by means of the following example:

1. Finland was the first country to give women the vote.

Now ask yourself:

• Do you know the meaning of this sentence?

• Is (1) informative?
• Do you know if it’s true?

Notice that to answer the second question above, you first need to be able to answer the
first and the last question, because, as we mentioned in the Introduction (cf. Section
0.2), false sentences do not correspond to facts, they do not inform us of anything being
the case in the extra-linguistic world.1

Our ability to assign a truth value to sentences is key then for there to be transmission of
information by means of language. But this does not mean that we have to check with
reality everything that we’re being told before we decide that it is true and we can add it
to our store of information, the set of facts we believe to be true. Most of the time, we
go on trust. So if your flat mate tells you ‘It’s raining’, you’ll probably grab an umbrella
or a raincoat without doing any checking, because you trust your friend. In example (1)
above, if you thought that I was making an assertion and you trusted me, you would
have assumed that Finland was the first country to give women the vote. But I wasn’t
1
We often talk colloquially of ‘false information’, but strictly speaking ‘false information’ is no
information at all. That’s why we worry so much about how easily fake news spreads.

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asserting the sentence, I was just using it as an example to illustrate how knowledge of
meaning is just that, knowledge of meaning, not knowledge of reality; it alone does not
convey information about reality. For that, the sentence has to have the property of
being true. 2

A dominant perspective on the study of meaning, Truth-conditional Semantics, has

focused on characterising meaning in terms of the connections that it allows speakers to
make with the world. We turn to that next.

2. Truth-conditional semantics

Consider the following sentence:

2. It is raining outside.

You cannot tell in advance whether it is true or false. You have to look out of the
window. But because you know the meaning of this English sentence, you know what
the world must be like for it to be true, or for it to be false. In other words, you know its
truth conditions, i.e. the conditions that make it true. When we discussed the external
significance of language in the introduction to this unit, we saw that an important part of
the meaning of a sentence involves the ability to assign it one of the truth values on the
basis of the facts of the situation, that’s why we say that:

 To know the meaning of a sentence is to know the conditions that would have
to be satisfied in reality for the sentence to be true.

Knowledge of meaning is therefore equated in truth-conditional semantics with

knowledge of truth conditions. To see this more clearly think of a sentence like (3); (3a-
d) give us the conditions that must be the case in the real world for it to be true, its truth-
conditions. Or take a sentence like (4) and conditions (a-b).

3. John is a bachelor.

a. John is human.
b. John is male.
c. John is an adult.
d. John has never married.

4. John killed Mary.

a. Mary died.
b. John caused Mary’s death.

You can see how in giving the conditions that make a sentence true, we’re in fact
specifying the meaning of the sentence.
The truth or falsity of sentences like (2-4) depends on the state of affairs in the world,
that’s why we say that (2-4) are synthetic statements, and if true, they are contingently
or empirically true, and inform us about some fact in the world.

2
A property (1) above, doesn’t have!

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Now consider (5-6):

5. Dogs are animals.

6. My bachelor cousin has never married.

In contrast to (2-4), you know, just by looking at the words on the page, that sentences
(5-6) are true because you speak English and understand their meaning. These
statements are true regardless of any relations with the world, because they are not
about the world, they are about the meaning of linguistic expressions. We call sentences
like (5-6), which are true in virtue of their meaning, analytical statements. When we
look at meaning relations between sentences we’ll see how this distinction matters.

 Now give the truth value of the following statements:

7. It is snowing.
8. Today is Wednesday.
9. There is not a cloud in the sky.
10. It is quite quiet.
11. It is a beautiful view.
12. There will be a storm tomorrow.

Question: Why might it be difficult to assign a truth value to (10-12)?

We are going to assume that truth values for declarative sentences can be given as in (7-
9), but examples (10-12) show that for many sentences which describe subjective
judgments or events in the future it is not easy or even possible to decide on their truth
value. This shows one of the limitations of the truth-conditional approach to meaning.3

2.1 A first glimpse at propositional logic

Logic studies the patterns of valid inference in human reasoning. To say that an
inference is valid is to say that the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the
conclusion. Logic provides us with a metalanguage that can help us represent sentence
meaning, especially anything that contributes to the truth or falsity of expressions. In
this chapter we’re going to take a look at propositional logic, the branch of logic that
deals with relations between propositions, in particular, the truth effects of connectives
on compound statements.

A simple example of a linguistic effect on truth value comes from negating a sentence.
If we have a sentence like (13a) below in English, adding ‘not’ will reverse its truth
value:

13. a. Your car has been stolen.

b. Your car has not been stolen.

To show that this relationship works for any statement, logicians use a schema called
logical form, where a propositional variable (a letter: P, Q, R, etc.) 4 stands for the
3
We are going to ignore here what truth-conditional semantics would have to say about non-
declarative sentence types and other issues that arise.
4
Very often lower case letters are used instead of caps for propositional variables.

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statement, and a special symbol  for negation. The corresponding logical forms for
(13a) and (13b) are given in (14a-b):

14. a. P
b. P

The effect of negation on the truth-value of a statement can be shown by a truth table,
where each row represents one possible combination or state of affairs:

15. P P
T F
F T

This table shows that when P is true, P is false, and when P is false, P is true.

2.1.1 Compound statements: The connective ‘and’ (&)

The truth value of other linguistic elements is studied in logic in the same way. A
number of connectives are especially important to logicians because they have a
predictable effect on the truth conditions of compound statements. For example, the
truth value of a compound formed by using ‘and’ to join two statements is predictable
from the truth of the constituent statements. For example:

16. a. The house is on fire. (P)

b. The fire brigade are on their way. (Q)
c. The house is on fire and the fire brigade are on their way. (P&Q)

If (16a) and (16b) above are true, then compound (16c) is also true. If however either of
(16a) or (16b) is false, then the compound will be false. This can be shown by designing
a truth table for ‘and’ and representing it by a special symbol &.5 The conjoined
propositions are called conjuncts.

17. P Q P&Q
T T T
T F F
F T F
F F F

Each statement within the compound may be true or false, which gives us four
possibilities. As we’ve seen above, each row represents one possible combination or
state of affairs: row one of the table represents a situation in which the two statements
are true: the house is indeed on fire and the fire brigade are on their way and it tells us
that if these are the facts of the situation, then (15c) is true. Rows two and three tell us
that if either of (16a) or (16b) is false then the compound will be false. Most obviously
of all, row four shows that (16c) is false if there’s no fire and no fire brigade on their
way.

5
Some authors use the symbol ∧ for the logical conjunction connective.

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➢ A truth-functional definition of the word ‘and’ (&)

‘And’ joins two or more statements to form a compound statement whose truth value is
true if all the component statements are true; otherwise it is false.

➢ Conjunction reduction

The conjunction connective only connects propositions expressed by sentences, but the
word ‘and’ can connect a wide range of types of expression. Some of the sentences in
which ‘and’ connects expressions smaller than sentences can be analysed as
conjunction reduction, a linguistic abbreviation for what is logically a conjunction of
whole propositions, as the paraphrases in (18b-20b) indicate:

18. a. [Moira and Harry] left.

b. Moira left and Harry left.
19. a. Tom saw [Mora and Harry].
b. Tom saw Mora and Tom saw Harry.
20. a. Moira was [changing her spark plugs and listening to talkback radio].
b. Moira was changing her spark plugs and Moira was listening to
talkback radio.

But not all uses of ‘and’ to join non-sentential expressions can be analysed as
conjunction reduction. Go to the exercise section for cases were ‘and’ does not
correspond to a sentential connective.

2.1.2 Compound statements: The connective ‘or’ (v)

The disjunction connective corresponds to the use of the word ‘or’ which is commonly
glossed as ‘either or both’, and described as inclusive disjunction. The atomic
propositions in a disjunction are called disjuncts.

21. a. Leo Messi is injured. (P)

b. Leo Messi is suspended. (Q)
c. Leo Messi is injured or he is suspended. (PvQ)

22. P Q PvQ
T T T
T F T
F T T
F F F

➢ A truth-functional definition of the word ‘or’

‘Or’ joins two or more statements to form a composite statement whose truth value is
true unless all the component statements are false.

Although this is how the logical disjunction connective operates, not all compound
statements containing ‘or’, are interpreted this way.

23. The agent arrived in Berlin on the 9.25 or the 11.10.

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Here one or the other of the connected sentences is true, but not both. This sentence
cannot be understood to mean that the agent arrived on both trains. But, as the truth
table in (22) shows, logical disjunction is inclusive (= either or both), so to give the
logical form for (23) we can’t use the logical disjunction connective on its own. This
exclusive disjunction use of ‘or’ can be represented by adding the qualification ‘and not
both’ to logical disjunction. The logical form that would correspond to disjunctions
which are interpreted exclusively (= either, but not both) is given in (24):

24. (PvQ) & (P&Q)

Note that here the brackets are used to indicate which proposition, simple or complex, is
combined by a particular connective or combined with negation. The disjunction P v Q
is itself the first conjunct. The second conjunct is itself a conjunction, a negated
conjunction in fact.

Sometimes exclusive disjunction is represented by means of the operator ve, which

would give us the truth table in (25):

25. P Q P ve Q
T T F
T F T
F T T
F F F

➢ Disjunction reduction

Where two propositions joined by disjunction have some content in common, the
sentence expressing the proposition (with the word ‘or’) is usually abbreviated in the
form of disjunction reduction, much like conjunction reduction. For example ‘That job
will take two or three tins of paint, depending on the weather’ is interpreted as ‘That job
will take two tins of paint or that job will take three tins of paint, depending on the
weather’.

Exercises

1. Do the truth table for the formula in (24) to verify that it corresponds to the truth
table in (25).
2. We have seen that negation has the effect of reversing the truth values of
expressions. Give the truth tables for the formulas below.

P Q P&Q  (P & Q) PvQ  (P v Q)

T T
T F
F T
F F

3. Draw the truth table to show that ‘It is not the case that P and Q is true’ is the
same as ‘Either P is false or Q is false (or both)’. Give the logical forms first.

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4. Verify that ‘It is not the case that either P or Q is true’ means the same as ‘Both
P and Q are false’. Give the logical forms first.
5. Draw truth tables for the following sentences. Give their logical forms first.
(Bear in mind that you’ll have to use brackets carefully or you won’t get the
truth-conditions of the sentences right).

a. Either Chelsea won and West Ham drew, or Arsenal lost.

b. Pooh will have honey and either he will have maple syrup or he will
have clotted cream.

➢ Remember that because there is an intimate connection between meaning and truth, if
two expressions have the same meaning, they’ll have the same truth conditions (i.e.,
they’ll have the same descriptive content, and so will be true or false in exactly the same
circumstances.) Also, if one expression has more than one meaning, then each
interpretation will have different truth conditions (i.e. there’ll be circumstances in which
one is true and the other false and vice versa), as reflected on the truth-tables.

2.2 Contradiction and tautology

Look at the following sentences. Are they true or false?

26. She passed the exam and she did not pass the exam.
27. Either she passed the exam or she did not pass the exam.

P P P & P P v P
T F F T
F T F T

We see that the truth behaviour of these statements is predictable from their form. These
sentences are composed of a single statement (P) and its negation (P) and are true or
false regardless of the state of the world. We call statements like (26) logical
contradictions, because there’s no possible state of affairs that can make them true. In
contrast, tautologies like (27) are always true as there’s no possible state of affairs that
can make them false. We can also describe (26) as analytically false, as its form makes
it necessarily false, and (27) as analytically true (cf. Section 2, this Unit), as it is true in
virtue of its form (PvP).

What we see in (26-27) is that a relation in the meaning of two expressions (here
contradiction / tautology) determines their truth-conditions. Many of the most important
meaning relations in language can be characterised using truth conditions in this way, as
we’ll see in Unit 4.

2.3 About the referential approach to meaning

We’ve seen that truth-conditional semantics focuses on the external significance of

language, on how, through meaning, language allows us to describe and inform others
about the extra-linguistic reality. However, the referential perspective leaves out aspects
of meaning which require other types of explanation, which we can see, for example,

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because some expressions in the language do no refer to anything but are still
meaningful (e.g., ‘so’, ‘maybe’, ‘but’, ‘hello’, ‘please’, ‘unicorn’, ‘the tooth fairy’).

Also, referential theories of meaning cannot account for the difference between (28) and
(29) in which the speaker chooses to view the same situation from different
perspectives, as either an activity (28) or as a state (29), or from the perspective of one
of the participants in the situation, rather than another (30-31):

28. John is sleeping.

29. John is asleep.
30. John is taller than Mike.
31. Mike is shorter than John.

In fact, different languages have different conventional ways of viewing situations. We

can compare the three ways of saying that someone has a cold in (32-34) below:

32. (English) You have a cold.

33. (Somali) Hargab baa ku haya (‘A cold has you’)
34. (Irish) Tá slaghdán ort. (‘A cold is on you’)

In English and Somali, we see the situation viewed as possession: in English the person
possesses the disease, in Somali the disease possesses the person. In Irish the situation is
viewed as location: the person is the location for the disease. 6

There are plenty of examples across languages that

“Different languages may guide speakers to specify different kinds of

information in their speech. Therefore, different languages may cause their
speakers to activate different information in memory when recounting the same
episode, or to highlight different information about the perceptible world when
inspecting or describing the same scene”. (Casasanto 2016:159)

Here goes a few:

a) English motion verbs tend to specify manner of motion (e.g. ‘running’,

‘flying’, ‘rolling’), whereas Spanish verbs more often specify a path of
motion (e.g. ‘entrar’, ‘salir’). Although English typically includes path
information in other parts of speech (e.g. prepositions, as in ’the bird flew
down from the nest’), Spanish and other path languages like Korean often
omit manner information altogether.7
b) In the conceptualisation of time and space we also find many differences
across languages. While English tends to describe duration in terms of one-

6
Cf. Saeed 2009:24-25.
7
Manner information in Spanish is often conveyed through external participial phrases or other
manner phrases (‘Salió del país volando/en avión’ = ‘He flew out of the country’, where ‘salió’
encodes path of motion and ‘volando’/‘en avión’, manner of motion). It’s interesting that it’s
been shown experimentally that users of the two languages construct representations for this
type of sentence that highlight different aspects of the situation described (cf. Casasanto 2016).
We can see this from, for example, what each group of speakers remembers about the situations
read / been told about.

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dimensional spatial length (e.g. ‘a long time’, like ‘a long rope’), this uni-
dimensional mapping is not universal. Greek speakers tend to express
duration in terms of volume or amount (e.g. ‘a lot of time’ (‘poli ora’), like a
lot of water (‘poli nero’). Rather than ‘a long night’, Greek speakers would
say ‘a big night’ (‘megali nychta’) to indicate that the night seemed to last a
long time. Greek speakers can express duration in terms of linear extent, just
as English speakers can make use of volume or amount expressions, but
volume metaphors are more frequent and productive in Greek, whereas
linear extent metaphors are more frequent and productive in English (‘a
lengthy/ extended/drawn out meeting’).
c) Dutch, like English and Spanish describes pitches as ‘high’ (‘hoog’) or ‘low
(‘laag’), but this is not the only possible spatial metaphor for pitch. In Farsi,
high pitches are ‘thin’ (‘näzok’) and low pitches are ‘thick’ (‘kolofi’) and so,
for them, a tuba sounds ‘thicker’ than a flute.8

 “Theories of meaning are called representational when their emphasis is on the way
that our reports about reality are influenced by the conceptual structures
conventionalised in our language.” (Saeed 2009:25).

“We can see these two approaches as focusing on different aspects of the same
process: talking about the world. In referential theories, meaning derives from
language being attached to, or grounded in, reality. In representational
approaches meaning derives from language being a reflection of our conceptual
structures. The two approaches are influenced by ideas from philosophy and
psychology.” (Saeed 2009:25).

 We can conclude from all this that reference is one important aspect of the meaning
of expressions but to fully understand how meaning is expressed in language we also
need to look at the link between language and the conceptual structures in our minds.

➢ References

These notes have borrowed extracts from the following sources:

Casasanto, D. 2016 “Linguistic relativity”, in N. Riemer (ed.) The Routledge handbook

of Semantics”, Cornwall: Routledge.
Gregory, H. 2000 Semantics. London: Routledge. (Unit 2)
Kearns, K. 2000 Semantics. Basingstoke: Palgrave. (Unit 2)
Saeed, J. 2009 Semantics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. (Chapter 4)

➢ Exercises

1. Decide which of these sentences are analytically true:

a. The train will either arrive or it won’t arrive.
b. If it rains, we’ll get wet.
c. Every doctor is a doctor.

8
These notes are almost a word for word copy of Casasanto, D. 2016 “Linguistic relativity”, in
N. Riemer (ed.) The Routledge handbook of Semantics”, Cornwall: Routledge, pp. 158-174).

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d. If Albert killed a deer, then Albert killed an animal.

e. Dublin is the capital of the Republic of Ireland.
f. Every city has pollution problems.

2. Can the underlined non-sentential expressions be analysed as conjunction

reduction? If they can, give the propositions being conjoined and if they can’t,
try to explain why that is.

a. Sally and Harry met for lunch.

b. Sally, Harry, Jeff and Buzz met for lunch.
c. Harry, Jeff and Buzz surrounded Charles.

3. Do we interpret the following statements as inclusive (i.e., logical) disjunctions

or as exclusive disjunctions?

a. Either you take your bicycle to school or you walk to school.

b. You will find milk in the fridge or in the larder.
c. John is in Malta or John is in London.
d. If you’re pregnant or have a heart condition, please tell the nurse.
e. You can have a discount if you or a member of your family live in the
area.
f. You will pay the fine or you will go to jail.
g. Students can be assessed by assignments or a final exam.

4. We’ve seen that the order of combining statements can be important. What are
the two meanings of the sentence below? Give the logical form corresponding to
each meaning. Note that this time you will need three propositional variables
and eight rows in your truth table!

John paid Mary and Mary paid Bill or John paid Bill.

How can the two meanings be distinguished in English by inserting a

strategically placed ‘either’?

5. Give the logical forms corresponding to (a-d) below, and say which of them are
equivalent.

a. Either P is false or Q is false.

b. It is not the case that P and Q is true.
c. It is not the case that P or Q is true.
d. P and Q are false.

6. Give the logical form for the sentences below

a. I read the book but didn’t understand it.

b. I read a book but understood it.

7. Show (by drawing the truth tables) that the pairs of sentences in (a-b) and (c-d)
below have the same truth conditions:

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a. John proposed to Mary, and either she hit him or he banged his head.
b. Either John proposed to Mary and she hit him, or John proposed to
Mary and he banged his head.
c. Either Colonel Mustard did it, or it was done in the billiards room and
it was done with the candlestick.
d. Either Colonel Mustard did it, or it was done in the billiards room,
and either colonel Mustard did it or it was done with the candlestick.

8. In the examples containing two independent statements, there are four possible
combinations of states of affairs, so the truth table has four rows. The exercises
that involve three independent statements require eight rows in the truth table.
How many rows would you need to draw truth tables for the following sentence.
Draw its logical form first:

Either John loves Mary and Mary loves Bill, or Mary loves Jack and jack
loves Tina.

9. Do the truth tables for the statements that follow and then comment on any
differences that you perceive.

a. John lives in Dublin and Peter in Rome.

b. Peter lives in Rome and John in Dublin.

c. Lisa met the love of her life and married.

d. Lisa married and met the love of her life.

10. Do the truth table for ‘either P or Q but not both’. What can you say about the
result you’ve obtained? 9

11. A) Translate these English sentences into Spanish, Basque and any other
languages you’re familiar with.

a. The bottle floated into/out of the cave.

b. The balloon floated up the chimney.
c. The ball span across the line.
d. She pirouetted out of the lecture hall.
e. They rolled the beer keg into the seminar.
e. I cut the wrapper off the package.
f. Brian wiped the fingerprints from the counter.

B) Now translate these Spanish sentences into English:

a. Entró en la casa (corriendo).

b. Subió las escaleras (corriendo).
c. Saqué al perro de la habitación (empujándolo).
d. Salió del agujero (saltando).

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For answers to exercises (4) and (7-10) go to Gregory 2000, Unit two.

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What makes these exercises difficult? What’s the generalisation about the
meaning of English and Spanish verbs of movement that explains the difficulty?

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