gligeti Creative Commons License 2009.03.04 0 0 66

Mit találtam? Majdnem minden itt van amiről beszéltünk (van néhány apróság, ami csak az angolra igaz, a többi ide is jó)...

 

http://www.answers.com/topic/logical-conjunction

 

A minor issue of logic and language is the role of the word "but". Logically, the sentence "it's raining, but the sun is shining" is equivalent to "it's raining, and the sun is shining", so logically, "but" is equivalent to "and". However, "but" and "and" are semantically distinct in natural language. Speakers use "but", a conjunction of contradiction, to mark their surprise or reservation vis-a-vis a circumstance that goes against a trend.

One way to resolve this problem of correspondence between symbolic logic and natural language is to observe that the first sentence (using "but"), implies the existence of a hidden but mistaken assumption, namely that the sun does not shine when it rains. We might say that, given probability p that it rains and the sun shines, and probability 1 − p that it rains and the sun does not shine, or that it does not rain at all, we would say "but" in place of "and" when p was low enough to warrant our incredulity.

That implication captures the semantic difference of "and" and "but" without disturbing their logical equivalence. On the other hand, in Brazilian logic, the logical equivalence is broken between A BUT NOT B (where "BUT NOT" is a single operator) and A AND (NOT B), which is a weaker statement.

"But" is also sometimes disjunctive (It never rains but it pours); sometimes minutive (Canada has had but three shots on goal); sometimes contrastive (He was not God, but merely an exalted man); sometimes a spatial preposition (He's waiting but the house); and sometimes interjective (My, but that's a lovely boat). These uses await semantic assimilation with conjunctive "but".

Like "and", "but" is sometimes non-commutative: "He got here, but he got here late" is not equivalent to "He got here late, but he got here". This example shows also that unlike "and", "but" can be felicitously used to conjoin sentences that entail each other; compare "He got here late, and he got here".