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Apparently these concepts of syntax, semantics, expressions, and language have some differences (and have their own definitions if soundness, completeness, functional vs semantic, etc).

Can anyone please highlight the definitions and differences between all these?

user525966
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    Have you tried posting your exact question into a Google search? – John Douma Sep 13 '18 at 17:14
  • I think your question is too broad. Could you be more specific, possibly using several posts for several questions? – Taroccoesbrocco Sep 13 '18 at 17:22
  • See Formal language : "a set of strings of symbols together with a set of rules that are specific to it. The alphabet of a formal language is the set of symbols,from which the strings of the language may be formed. The strings formed from this alphabet are called words (or expressions), and the words that satisfy the specific formation rules of the language are sometimes called *well-formed formulas." – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Sep 13 '18 at 17:31
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    Because I've already been part of this series of questions, I'm going to write an answer to this one. But this will probably be my last contribution: I think you would be better served by talking to your instructor, since I think what you really need is to have a conversation about the issues rather than a disjointed series of questions. I do hope that what I write below is helpful, though. – Noah Schweber Sep 13 '18 at 17:32
  • In mathematical logic, a formal theory is a set of sentences expressed in a formal language. A formal system (also called a logical calculus, or a logical system) consists of a formal language together with a deductive apparatus (also called a deductive system) [i.e. axioms+rules]" – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Sep 13 '18 at 17:36
  • Up to now, we are in the syntactical context. "Formal languages are entirely syntactic in nature but may be given semantics that give meaning to the elements of the language. For instance, in mathematical logic, the set of possible formulas of a particular logic is a formal language, and an interpretation assigns a meaning to each of the formulas—usually, a truth value.The study of interpretations of formal languages is called formal semantics." – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Sep 13 '18 at 17:37
  • @NoahSchweber I don't have an instructor / I'm not a student -- I'm just a random person trying to learn. So I don't have much choice outside of asking questions unfortunately! – user525966 Sep 13 '18 at 19:37

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Below I'm going to try to explain what the various ideas are. I'm not outlining how to prove any claims relating them, since I think at your stage it's more important to first get a clear sense of what exactly each thing you're trying to prove actually is.

"Syntax" and "semantics" are generally used to divide (most) concepts in basic logic into two parts - roughly, syntactic concepts are those which are about logic as strings-of-symbols (so "$\vdash$" is syntactic, as is the notion of wff) while semantic concepts are those which are about logic as describing properties of (classes of) structures (so "$\models$" is semantic, as ). There are of course results and concepts which straddle the two; most obviously, in a given logical system (like propositional logic or first-order logic) we will often have a notion of $\vdash$, a notion of $\models$, and completeness/soundness theorems showing that they are in fact equivalent. Although the syntax/semantics divide isn't total, it is a useful organizing idea in logic.


Now with this distinction in mind, let's look at an "idealized story" of how a logic is built:

  • First, we define a notion of well-formed formula (wff). A wff is simply a string of symbols with no inherent meaning; we've simply declared some strings to be "well-formed" and others to not be well-formed. At this stage, there is no notion of proof, or of satisfaction, or anything else really. We also single out at this point special wffs, called sentences, but again at this stage that's a purely formal distinction. This is on the syntactic side.

  • Next, we define a notion of proof. That is, we define a relation "$\vdash$ between sets of wffs and individual wffs (often we restrict attention to sentences). Thinking very abstractly, all we know about $\vdash$ is that it is a subset of $\mathcal{P}(wff)\times wff$, but generally it arises as the closure of a certain set of basic relations (e.g. the sequent rules). This is also on the syntactic side.

  • Having constructed the basic syntactic side of our logic, we now turn to the semantic apparatus. We define a notion of structure and a notion of satisfaction (this is "$\models$") between structures and sentences (or between structures + variable assignments and wffs). This is on the semantic side.

    • At this point we introduce also a couple useful abbreviations. Expressions of the form "$\mathcal{M}\models\Gamma$" where $\Gamma$ is a set of sentences instead of a single sentence are understood as "For all $\varphi\in \Gamma$, $\mathcal{M}\models\varphi$;" similarly, expressions of the form "$\Gamma\models\varphi$" where $\Gamma$ is a set of sentences instead of a structure are understood as abbreviations for "For all $\mathcal{M}$, if $\mathcal{M}\models\Gamma$ then $\mathcal{M}\models\varphi$. But these are merely abbreviations, not new concepts.
  • We can now state and (hopefully!) prove the soundness and completeness theorems, which are the left-to-right and right-to-left directions respectively of the equivalence $$\Gamma\vdash\varphi\quad\iff\quad\Gamma\models\varphi.$$ This straddles both sides of the syntax/semantics divide - that's the whole point.

    • In fact, in my opinion one of the main purposes of logic is to study the ways that the line between syntax and semantics gets blurred - maybe even the purpose, if you construe it broadly enough!

This is of course not the only way these concepts can be presented, and often "$\models$" is presented before "$\vdash$" (and I strongly prefer that order); however, I think that what I've written above has the advantage of clearly putting all the syntax first and then moving on to semantics, as opposed to going syntax-semantics-syntax.


That covers everything in your question ... except for the concept of functional completeness. It's important at this point to stress that the word "completeness" here has no connection whatsoever with the word "completeness" in the context of the completeness theorem; to avoid confusion on this point, I'm going to refer to it here as "functional sufficiency" instead.

Understood very abstractly, a truth functional is anything that combines sentences (or wffs) and produces a new sentence (or wff) whose truth value in a given structure (or structure + variable assignment) depends only on the truth values of the inputs in that structure (or structure + variable assignment). Basically, a truth functional is a truth table.

  • And here we hit a crucial point: this notion of truth functionality only makes sense in light of $\models$, since it uses the notion of "truth-in-a-structure." Really, we should say that a set of truth functionals is/isn't functionally complete with respect to a given notion of $\models$; I think I was very unclear on this point in my previous responses to your question, so I want to highlight it here.

For example, "AND" ("$\wedge$") is a truth functional: $p\wedge q$ is true in a given structure + variable assignment iff both $p$ and $q$ are true in that structure + variable assignment. By contrast, the operator "SPLURG" which takes a wff $p$ and outputs the wff $p$ if $p$ has length $\le 6$ and $\neg p$ if $p$ has length $>6$ is not a truth functional: if $a$ is an atomic proposition, we have $SPLURG(a)=a$ but $SPLURG(\neg\neg\neg\neg\neg\neg a)=\neg a$, even though $a$ and $\neg\neg\neg\neg\neg\neg a$ are equivalent!

In the context of a specific logical system - and in fact all we need is the notion of wff and the notion of $\models$ (so "$\vdash$" isn't a priori relevant here) - a set $A$ of truth functionals is functionally sufficient if every truth functional can be written as a composition of elements of $A$.

It should be clear now why functional sufficiency and completeness/soundness are unrelated: the notion "$\vdash$" doesn't even appear in my explanation of functional sufficiency above!

Noah Schweber
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  • How is a sentence a "special" wff? I thought sentence was a synonym for wff? – user525966 Sep 14 '18 at 09:18
  • And what is P(wff) x wff exactly? – user525966 Sep 14 '18 at 09:18
  • What is meant by "between structures + variable assignments and wffs" -- again I thoight these were mostly wffs we were dealing with. How are you using "structures" and "variable assignments" with $\vDash$? – user525966 Sep 14 '18 at 09:20
  • @user525966 $\mathcal{P}(wff)$ is the set of sets of wffs - "$\mathcal{P}$" means powerset. A sentence is a special wff in that it has no free variables; this isn't an issue in propositional logic, but becomes one in first-order logic, and I've tried to keep what I wrote above applicable to both. If you're interested in only propositional logic, replace "structure + variable assignment" with "interpretation;" the point is that that's the thing that shows up on the left hand side of $\models$. – Noah Schweber Sep 14 '18 at 12:39
  • Is every wff in propositional logic a sentence? in FOL is $x > 5$ a wff but not a sentence? Meanwhile $10 > 5$ is both a wff and a sentence? – user525966 Oct 24 '18 at 00:21
  • @user525966 Yes, since propositional logic doesn't have variables, "wff" and "sentence" are synonymous there (and your other guesses are right as well). – Noah Schweber Oct 24 '18 at 00:40
  • So in prop logic wff/expression/sentence/proposition/statement are all synonymous? But in FOL wffs can be split, either expressions/predicates or statements/sentences? Not sure if I have that right. I presume "proposition" is not typically used in FOL even if we can write them. – user525966 Oct 24 '18 at 00:49