Are the two statements below compound statements based on logic or just simple statements?

Question

If they are considered compound, what are their connectives would be?

*For each word, a speller who misspells the word immediately drops out of the competition.

*Rule no. 3 applies when not all spellers misspell the word.

Answer 1

This is an interesting question!

One of the first steps of logical analysis is to translate natural language statements into precise subject-predicate clauses, then move toward symbolization. Strictly speaking, if we are dealing with two qualities/categories, there are 24 possible clauses, but we generally only use a few of these.

The first sentence can be reduced to a simple universal affirmative clause without losing any meaning: "All people who misspell a word are dropped from the competition." All M are D.

If we find that we cannot reduce a sentence to a simple clause without losing meaning, then we are likely dealing with a compound statement. This is the case in sentence two. It turns out that most ideas can be expressed by some combination of conjunction (and), disjunction (or), implication (if/then), and negation. There is a relationship among these, too, especially when we involve alethic considerations like possibility and necessity. In any event, sentence two is an implication or conditional statement. It is an "if X then Y" idea: "If it is not the case that all spellers misspell a word, then rule 3 applies."