Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

A-Z 959proportional analogyanalogyproportional clauseSemantically defined modal clause functioning as an adverbial modifier to indicate adependency relationship proportional to the state of affairs expressed in the main clause.They are introduced by the+comparative in both the dependent and independent clauses:The closer they came to the city, the more excited they became.proportional oppositionoppositionproposition [Lat. propositio ‘statement of thefacts or substance of a case’]Term adopted by semantics and speech act theory from philosophy and formal logic(where a proposition is usually designated by ‘that p’). By ‘proposition’ one usuallyunderstands the language-independent common denominator of the meaning of sentenceswhich express the factuality of a given state of affairs. In appropriate utterances of thesentences Phil smokes habitually. /Does Phil really smoke habitually? /It is not true thatPhil smokes habitually. /If Phil smokes habitually, then he will not live much longer,every time the same reference (i.e. to Phil) and the same predication (i.e. of habitualsmoking) is made, quite independent of the illocutionary force (assertion, question,denial, etc.). Thus, a proposition is the semantic kernel of a sentence that determines itstruth conditions, regardless of the syntactic form and lexical filling of the given form ofexpression. A distinction is drawn between ‘coarser’ concepts of proposition, accordingto which, for example, all logically true sentences denote the same proposition, and‘finer’ concepts of proposition, in which this is not the case. While older semantic models(cf. possible world semantics) conceived of propositions as unstructured units, the needfor a structured concept of proposition in linguistics is now more and more accepted (cf.situation semantics). Since propositional acts (i.e. acts of expressing a proposition) arealways constituents of illocutionary acts (illocution) and therefore cannot occurindependently, they must be distinguished from statements (i.e. illocutionary acts) inwhich propositions are asserted and not just expressed.