WordGarden.iosentential
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Meanings
Adjective
relating to sentences or sentence structure
in formal logic, relating to whole propositions treated as sentences
Beyond the definition
"Sentential" sounds fancy, but it simply means "having to do with sentences." Think of it as the formal adjective form of "sentence." It is mostly used in linguistics, logic, and philosophy when people talk about how sentences are built, linked, or understood. You would not use it for a prison sentence, of course; this word is only about language and statements. A linguist might talk about sentential ambiguity, where a sentence can be understood in more than one way because of its structure. In logic, someone might mention sentential connectives such as and, or, and if.
The word "sentential" refers to anything relating to sentences, not the kind that involve jail time, but the language units we speak and write. It is mainly used in fields such as linguistics, philosophy, and logic. You probably will not need it in everyday conversation, but it appears often in discussions about how meaning works in language.
"Sentential" describes features of sentences themselves. For example, sentential analysis means studying a sentence by looking at how its parts work together. In logic, a sentential connective is a word such as and, or, or if that joins statements or helps build larger ones.
The term also comes up when people talk about ambiguity. Sentential ambiguity happens when a sentence has more than one possible meaning because of the way it is put together, as in the classic example "I saw her duck." It also appears in areas like computational linguistics, where systems are built to read and understand sentences as complete units. In short, if the topic is about the form, meaning, or logical role of whole sentences, the right adjective is often sentential.
Examples
- 1
Grammar term
In grammar, words like "fortunately" are often called sentential adverbs.
- Domainsentential adverb
a word that comments on the whole sentence
- 2
Clause grammar
The verb "say" can introduce a sentential complement, as in "She said that she was tired."
- Domainsentential complement
a whole clause used after a verb
- 3
Logic
We studied sentential logic first and left predicate logic for the next chapter.
- Domainsentential logic
logic that deals with complete statements
See also
Forms and spellings
1 form open this card.
Main spelling
- sententialadjective