The Sentence

The Sentence

A sentence is a combination of words expressing complete thoughts and making meaningful sense. The finite is the pivot on which the sentence revolve, it is the factor that distinguish it from a phrase. A finite verb is a verb that reflects time (tense) and number and always comes after the subject. Scientifically speaking, sentence is sense tense.

Parts of a sentence

A sentence may be divided into several parts namely: the subject, predicate, object and adverbials.

Logic

Logic is the science of reasoning. It is the study of the methods and principles used to distinguish correct reasoning from incorrect reasoning. According to Drving M Cope and Card Cohem (2007), correct reasoning is predicted on certain objective criteria and that if these criteria are not known, then they cannot be used. Logic concerns itself with the discovery and presentation of those criteria that can be used to text arguments, and to sort good arguments from bad ones, i.e. reasoning is defined as the process of drawing a conclusion from evidence while conclusion is the fact, judgment or opinion produced by reasoning.

Psychologists observed that an average human being started reasoning at the age of nine (9) and continue to do so for life.

Basically, the logician is concerned with reasoning on every subject like science and medicine, ethics and law, politics and commerce, sports and games and even the simple affair of everyday life. It is only natural that things will happen the way they did in similar circumstances in the past.

Principles and Logic

Assumption

An assumption is a judgment or opinion which one considers to be fine without any certainty, for instance, one may conclude that girls who frequent nightclubs are immoral.

Premise

A premise is a statement or idea on which reasoning is based. This statement is meant to either affirm or doing that.

Facts and Opinion

A fact is something that has actual existence or an event that has actually happened or is happening. It also refers to information regarded being true and having reality.

Opinion

An opinion is an individual’s mental estimate, if it is that which a person believes in, convinces himself of based on what seems true. Whatever a person believes about something is his opinion of it. For instance,  I am of the opinion that games is a rude boy.

Characteristics of Fact

-       Relevance

-       Truth

-       Verification

-       Universal acceptability

-       Logical principles

Characteristics of Fact

-       Subjectivity

-       Predicted on sentiment and individual perspective

-       Not verifiable

So summarily, we say that fact refers to information whose prepositional value is invariable, and therefore unquestioned, either because of is known to have an actual existence, a truth, a universally acceptable proposition, or it is presented as having these value within a given text.

Examples of statement of facts / positive knowledge

The earth is spherical

Nigeria is in West Africa

Something is true or false. It may be in the form of an assumption or a fact. It is the bases for drawing conclusion. For instance, “Mathematics is difficult” is a premise and somebody might just conclude to hate maths.

Specific

A specific refers to just one case or instance. For instance rather than generalizing that young girls are lazy, one can specify thus “Shola refused to set table for dinner last night”. Others are form, validity, argument, identity, contradiction, excluded middle.

Generalization

This refers to a statement that covers many specific cases. For example, “young people are disobedient, we can say that” Yemi insulted her teacher yesterday”

Opinion on the other hand refers to statement indicating beliefs, interpretations, assumptions or preferences that may not necessarily hold true for all persons, for all places or for all time.

Consequently, an opinion may be overly expressed as an opinion, with overt ones as in the following examples:

The rector of federal polytechnic Nasarawa seems to me a good man

Reasoning

This is a situation where a normal mind think logically and draws conclusions, judgment or inferences from given facts or premises. It is the ability to use good sense. This enable one to decide on an action.

Example

Mr X and Miss Y are always seen together. They are both seen together in Mr X’s home or in Y’s house. They are seen in Mr X’s car together in the evening on a stroll. There is reason to conclude that they are lovers or betrothed.

Qualification

Often times, generalization are too sweeping that they become unhealthy. For instance, a generalization like “Tobacco smokers will die young” is too broad and needs to be trimmed down or qualified. This means that it needs to be stated in such a way not every smoker will die young. Certain specifics can be excluded by using some words to qualify the statement.

Refutation

 Flylon Willis sees it as the process of destroying the logical basis of someone else’s argument. It is therefore necessary to know what premises the other person is being his argumentation. For instance, a premise like “Democracy has come to stay in Nigeria” can be refuted by insisting that if democracy cannot save Nigeria, then let the military intervene.

Methods of Reasoning in Logic

These are:

Deductive method

Inductive method

Deductive Method: This is reasoning from the general to the specific or individual. It is argument in which the premises rather constitute conclusive for the conclusion.

Examples

All metals are conductors of electricity. Copper is a metal, therefore copper is a conductor of electricity.

Inductive Method: Inductive method is an instance of reasoning from individual or particular phenomenon to general conclusion. An inductive argument is in which the premises do not necessarily imply the conclusion. It helps to obtain knowledge of the general from knowledge of speaker.

a.     Bida is in Niger state

Niger state is in Nigeria

Bida therefore is in Nigeria

b.     Kolo has a real bag:

A red bag was found on the scene of the crime:

Therefore, Kolo committed the crime.

Argument

This designates a process of drawing conclusion from premises. It comprises a group of propositions of which one is claimed to follow from the rest which are regarded as the basis for the issue in question. It involves constructing a chain of reasoning, and is found in both deductive and inductive reasoning.

Proposition

A preposition is a statement in which an opinion or judgement is expressed. It makes a claim about something. For instance, an assertion that can be proved true or denied e.g.

1. Tall boys play football better.

2. Girls that are frequent right club are flirts.

LOGICAL FALLACIES

A fallacy is an enormous, misleading or unsound idea, belief or argument, and the error is the result of some misuse of the reasoning processes. We use the word fallacy to apply to some sort of conclusion that has been reached on the bases of unsound logic such as that all Nigerians should desire to hide in America because America has a higher standard of living than Nigeria.

Fallacy does not apply to simple error such as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe died in 1940. Well-informed, highly intelligent human beings are often guilty of fallacious reasoning, though the more one knows how the mind  then logic, the less likely he is to be illogical.

Some logical fallacies

Some sweeping generalisation.

This is a faulty induction based on insufficient sampling of specifics or lack of qualification of the generalisation.

Examples:

1. Soldiers work their aggressions by bullying civilians.

2. Lawyers are liars.

 Use of faulty premises

When one arrives at a deductive conclusion by a faulty premise, it is called faulty deduction. The conclusion so drawn, in most likely to be false. For example, consider thin assertion. “my mother is a good woman”. The only premise term which she comment derives may be that “any woman who cooks regularly and clears the home is a good woman”.

Polarise thinking

This designates thinking that are poles apart completely opposite each other. Some people including in polarised thinking, when dealing with complex ideas, maintaining illogically that a person must be either for or against an idea, either on this side or that sides either at the south poles and not somewhere in between. For instance “if you are not with us, you are against us”.

Begging the question

This is a logical fallacy in which a reasoned puts his conclusion into his premise, and then tries to use that premise to prove his conclusion. There is no demonstration that because one idea is tone, another must be true as a consequence for instance, a person may argue that we are.

Sure to have eternal life because the immortality of the soul guarantee that we will. The premises is that we will. The conclusion is that we will have eternal life boned on the promise that assumed that the soul is immortal. The conclusion and the promise is the same. Examples of begging the question are:

- Education is desirable because educated people are desirable.

Non sequitos

In a Latin phrase which means it does not follow. It represents a falling related to the misuse of promise, and it also derives from a sort of wild jump from a promise to a conclusion that has little of anything to do with the promise. Example

1.           Charles drinks. He portable beats his wife at home.

2.           Charles drinks. He cannot be a good leader.

False Analogy

Thin is thread to a male idea believable or to make a difficult concept clear. A false analogy is one that tries to make one idea seem tone by comparing of with another idea that really has no relationship to the first. For instance, comparing an individual family to a federal government to point out that a huge national debt means financial disaster.

Poisoning the well.

Mr. A does not want to drink from the well but he also prevents Mr. B from drinking from it.

Example:- Mr. A tries to discourage Mr. B from attending a public lecture under a personality by saying “the time spent listening to him is time wasted”.

All of the above are the formal fallacies. Others are material fallacies (fallacy of accident) verbal fallacy which include. (Accent, equivocation and amphiboly).

- Too wrongs make a right.

This accepts the fact that when wrongs are juxtaposed the lesser one is right and permissible.

Example.

If you consider the magnitude of Shegun’s fraud, you will realize that Yomi is a honest man, in fact a saint.

- Irrelevant Appeal To Authority.

Here a wrong conclusion is drawn and justified by the logician reference  to the position of relevant authority.

For instance in justifying good and work, a rich man can quote Karl Max’s postulation on the polarization of the society into two unequal parts.

LITERATURE

Literature is as old as man himself. IT existence predates pre-literate society. Basically, literature is predicated on story. But gradually this oral form graduates to written that we have today.

What is Literature:

Literature is a corpus of art work that deals with man’s inmate response to his socio – cultural environment. Man therefore does not life in isolation. His activities therefore is being regulated by the norms and orders of the society i.e. culture.

Through literature, man is able to marry the past and present, in order to project into the future. He draws copiously from the experience of the past which he juxtaposes with that of other present to correct the future. This is so because literature by nature is didactic.

As the society moves from one epoch to another, literature remains behind like a journalist, to take inventory who has read extensively on the Nigerian civil war, will no doubt appreciate the destructive nature of war as well as the need to avoid it in the future. Having said this, let us consider the various genres of literature.

Literary Genres

 Literature is divided into three broad genres namely:  Drama, prose and poetry.

Drama

Drama is considered the oldest of al literary genres. It is also the situation and aspiration by manipulating characters who come on stage to interact.

Drama originated from the Greek city state of ableins. Drama is a stage like re-enactment and representation of human experiences, and aspiration through the interaction of characters. The end product of drama is the presentation on stage. Drama is in turn divided into three categories i.e. tragedy, comedy and tragic – comedy.

Tragedy

Tragedy is a serious form of drama. The classical tragedy weaves action around a central character who suffer a misfortune. The protagonist is pitched against certain forces one of which is his own weakness. This invariably leads to his downfall. An example of this is Ola Rotimi’s The god’s are not to blame.

Comedy

Comedy on the other hand is the opposite of tragedy. It is a light hearted lay that ends happily. It does not result in the death or misfortune. An example is Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel.

Tragedy – comedy.

This is the closest to real life situation as it presents both the negative and positive side of life.

Prose Fiction

Prose fiction as a genre of literature cam be divided into fiction and non fiction.

Fiction is the narrative writing down from the imagination of the artist rather than from facts. Incidents events, characters, setting and time are basically the creation of the author and as such not true to life. For example William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  

In non-fiction, the writer deals specifically with incidents and events that are true to life. Such incidents and event may be moral, social, political or cultural. Examples of such work are Tell Freedom by Peter Abraham and Zambia shall be free by Kenneth Kaunda.

Whether prose or fiction, the peculiar thing about this writing is that it makes use of everyday conversational language.

Rhetorics of Writing

Theme

Plot

Characterisation

Setting