A Class Room Logic / Deductive and Inductive, with Special Application to the Science and Art of Teaching

by George Hastings McNair

3. CATEGOREMATIC AND SYNCATEGOREMATIC WORDS.

There are some words which, when used alone, denote definite notions, such as man, tree, dog, justice. On the other hand there are other words which, when used alone, do not stand for a definite notion, such as up, beautifully, a, and.

Words like those in the first list are called categorematic words, while those in the second list illustrate syncategorematic words.

DEFINITION.

A categorematic word is one which forms a logical term unaided by other words. A syncategorematic word is one which must be used with other words to form a logical term.

Any word or group of words which can be used as either subject or predicate of a proposition is a logical term. If the one word in question can be used as either subject or predicate of a proposition then it must be a categorematic word. If it is impossible to use the one word as either subject or predicate of a proposition then this is a sure indication that such a word is syncategorematic.For example, there is no sense in the expressions, “_And_ is honest,” “_Of_ is not true”; hence _and_ and _of_ are syncategorematic.

We may conclude from this that nouns, descriptive adjectives and verbs may be categorematic words, while adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions are syncategorematic words.