Terms
What this domain tests
The term as the unit of meaning, kinds of terms, connotation and denotation, and the distribution of terms - the skill on which the whole syllogism unit depends.
Kinds of terms
- Singular (names one thing: "Karnataka"), general ("river"), collective ("team" - predicable of the group, not of each member).
- Concrete (refers to an object: "book"), abstract (refers to a quality: "courage").
- Positive ("honest") versus negative ("dishonest").
- Connotative terms mean an attribute and denote the objects having it ("poet"); non-connotative terms merely denote ("Mysuru").
- Denotation = the class a term applies to; connotation = the attributes fixing membership. Increasing connotation normally narrows denotation.
Distribution
A term is distributed when it stands for all of its class.
- A: subject distributed, predicate undistributed.
- E: both distributed.
- I: neither distributed.
- O: predicate distributed, subject undistributed.
Worked example
"All poets are imaginative." The subject "poets" is distributed - something is said of every poet. The predicate "imaginative" is undistributed, because nothing is claimed about all imaginative people. So the conversion "All imaginative people are poets" is invalid; it distributes a term the premise left undistributed.
Traps that cost marks
Treating "collective" as a synonym for "general"; forgetting that in O propositions it is the predicate that is distributed; assuming negative terms are automatically undistributed; overlooking that singular terms behave as distributed subjects.