Propositionwhether

Propositionwhether is a neologism used in interdisciplinary discussions of language, logic, and computation to denote a propositional content that is presented or evaluated in the form of a whether-clause or a binary-choice question. The term highlights the interface between declarative propositions and interrogative structures, especially those introduced by the complementizer whether in English and its equivalents in other languages.

In linguistics, propositionwhether describes the meaning carried by clauses like "whether it will rain," emphasizing how such clauses encode alternatives or conditions that can be true or false when resolved. In philosophy of language, the term is invoked in debates about whether questions can be treated as propositions or whether they instead express sets of propositions, possibilities, or requests for information.

In formal logic and computer science, propositionwhether is used informally to refer to decision predicates or test propositions that model branching, conditional evaluation, or query responses. It is relevant in fields such as model checking, query design, and natural language processing, where representing and resolving yes/no alternatives is important.

Critics note that the term is not standardized and risks conflating distinct theoretical categories (propositions, questions, and propositions-as-answers). Its usefulness depends on clear definition in context; when precisely defined, propositionwhether can serve as a convenient shorthand for discussing whether-clauses and binary-choice contents across disciplines.