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In formal semantics and philosophy of language, a definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of "the X" where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun.The definite description is proper if X applies to a unique individual or object.
For example, a grammar for a context-free language is left-recursive if there exists a non-terminal symbol A that can be put through the production rules to produce a string with A as the leftmost symbol. [15] An example of recursive grammar is a clause within a sentence separated by two commas. [16]
Rudolph Carnap defined the meaning of the adjective formal in 1934 as follows: "A theory, a rule, a definition, or the like is to be called formal when no reference is made in it either to the meaning of the symbols (for example, the words) or to the sense of the expressions (e.g. the sentences), but simply and solely to the kinds and order of the symbols from which the expressions are ...
Russell analyzes definite descriptions similarly to indefinite descriptions, except that the individual is now uniquely specified. Take as an example of a definite description the sentence "the current Emperor of Kentucky is gray". Russell analyses this phrase into the following component parts (with 'x' and 'y' representing variables):
The goal of formal semantics is to show how sentences of a natural language such as English could be translated into a formal logical language, and so would then be amenable to mathematical analysis. Following Russell , it is typical to translate indefinite noun phrases using an existential quantifier , [ 6 ] as in the following simple example ...
Expository writing is a type of writing where the purpose is to explain or inform the audience about a topic. [13] It is considered one of the four most common rhetorical modes. [14] The purpose of expository writing is to explain and analyze information by presenting an idea, relevant evidence, and appropriate discussion.
The formal description of language was further developed by linguists including J. R. Firth and Simon Dik, giving rise to modern grammatical frameworks such as systemic functional linguistics and functional discourse grammar. Computational methods have been developed by the framework functional generative description among others.
Structure of the syntactically well-formed, although thoroughly nonsensical, English sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" (historical example from Chomsky 1957) In logic , mathematics , computer science , and linguistics , a formal language consists of words whose letters are taken from an alphabet and are well-formed according to ...