Three Questions about the term "No One" [Sufficient/Necessary Indicators]

[rlouis1993]

Hello!

I have two question about the term "no one" as it pertains to this sentence:

"No one in the Latin department is disallowed from teaching multiple classes this semester."

The conditional logic is as such:

L ---> TC
TC---> L

My three questions are:

(1) Does "No One" act as a sufficient indicator for the Latin department?
(2) Is "No One" negating the disallowed term?
(3) If these two statements above are true, does this hold for every instance in which the word "No One" is used?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi rlouis,

Great questions! This is a similar case to the "unless" rule. The idea is that the necessary indicator term "is disallowed" has a negation in the term itself. So we treat this just like any term under the "unless" equation. We put the necessary term in as is, and negate the sufficient term.

The necessary term is "teaching multiple classes." The sufficient term is negated, so "no one" turns into "someone in the Latin department."

Latin allowed to teach multiple classes

We could also look at rephrasing this to make it easier to diagram. Every conditional statement can be rephrased as an "if.....then" statement. Here, it would read something like "if you are in the Latin department, then you are allowed to teach multiple classes." I almost always read my conditional diagrams back to myself as "if....then" statements no matter how the original conditional was phrased. I find it easier and smoother to work that way.

Regarding your third statement, yes---if you have a similar situation with a similar combination of negative terms, you can diagram it in the same way.

Great work!