propositio

Propositio is a Latin term that translates roughly as proposition or claim. In many historical and linguistic contexts, it refers to a declarative content that can be asserted as true or false. The word comes from proponere, meaning to put forth or set forth.

In classical and scholastic logic, propositio denotes the fundamental unit of argument: a subject term is related to a predicate term to form a statement that can be universal or particular, and affirmative or negative. This framework underpins the traditional square of opposition, which describes logical relationships among forms such as universal affirmative (All S are P), universal negative (No S are P), particular affirmative (Some S are P), and particular negative (Some S are not P). The propositio is typically analyzed in terms of quantity (universal vs particular) and quality (affirmative vs negative), with the subject and predicate terms playing central roles in categorical syllogisms.

Modern usage broadens the concept. In contemporary philosophy and linguistics, a proposition is the content or meaning of a declarative sentence, independent of its grammatical form, and it can be true or false. In propositional logic and formal semantics, propositions are the basic units of truth-conditional analysis. In mathematics, a proposition is a statement that can be proven or disproven, such as mathematical theorems and conjectures. The Latin term propositio appears mainly in historical or Latin-language sources, while “proposition” is standard in English-language discourse.