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Concept
Non-logical symbol
Summary
In logic, the formal languages used to create expressions consist of symbols, which can be broadly divided into constants and variables. The constants of a language can further be divided into logical symbols and non-logical symbols (sometimes also called logical and non-logical constants).
The non-logical symbols of a language of first-order logic consist of predicates and individual constants. These include symbols that, in an interpretation, may stand for individual constants, variables, functions, or predicates. A language of first-order logic is a formal language over the alphabet consisting of its non-logical symbols and its logical symbols. The latter include logical connectives, quantifiers, and variables that stand for statements.
A non-logical symbol only has meaning or semantic content when one is assigned to it by means of an interpretation. Consequently, a sentence containing a non-logical symbol lacks meaning except under an interpretation, so a sentence is said to be true or false under an interpretation. These concepts are defined and discussed in the article on first-order logic, and in particular the section on syntax.
The logical constants, by contrast, have the same meaning in all interpretations. They include the symbols for truth-functional connectives (such as "and", "or", "not", "implies", and logical equivalence) and the symbols for the quantifiers "for all" and "there exists".
The equality symbol is sometimes treated as a non-logical symbol and sometimes treated as a symbol of logic. If it is treated as a logical symbol, then any interpretation will be required to interpret the equality sign using true equality; if interpreted as a non-logical symbol, it may be interpreted by an arbitrary equivalence relation.
signature (logic)
A signature is a set of non-logical constants together with additional information identifying each symbol as either a constant symbol, or a function symbol of a specific arity n (a natural number), or a relation symbol of a specific arity.
Official source
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