Definition:Logical Connective
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Definition
A logical connective is an object which either modifies a statement, or connects existing statements into a larger, more complicated statement.
Other terms for logical connective which may be encountered are:
- Connective
- Propositional connective
- Sentential connective
- Logical constant
- Logical operator
- Sentence-forming operator
- Boolean operator (in the context of mathematical logic)
- Conjunction (as used in natural language - mathematics has a more specialised use for the term conjunction, however.
A connective can be considered as being an operator.
In propositional logic, the only types of connective you are likely to encounter are unary connectives, which take one statement as an operand, and binary connectives, which take two.
Some treatments do not consider unary connectives to be logical connectives as such, because they do not actually "connect" anything, but this is a trivial point which can serve only to confuse.
Also see
Sources
- Paul R. Halmos: Naive Set Theory (1960)... (previous)... (next): $\S 2$: The Axiom of Specification
- Donald Kalish and Richard Montague: Logic: Techniques of Formal Reasoning (1964): $\text{II}: \S 1$
- E.J. Lemmon: Beginning Logic (1965): $\S 1.2$
- Alan G. Hamilton: Logic for Mathematicians (1978): $\S 1.1$
- D.J. O'Connor and Betty Powell: Elementary Logic (1980): $\S 1.2$
- M. Ben-Ari: Mathematical Logic for Computer Science (1993): $\S 1.2$
- H. Jerome Keisler and Joel Robbin: Mathematical Logic and Computability (1996): $\S 1.1$
