Terms and Their Meaning
Chapter Seventeen
Syllabus topic 1.7, "Terms: Meaning of Terms - Connotation and denotation of terms - positive and negative terms, contrary and contradictory terms."
Pages 82 to 86 of 334
In one line
A term is a word or group of words that can stand as the subject or the predicate of a proposition.
In the wording a student can write in an examination: a term is that part of a proposition which names what is being spoken about or what is being said about it. Not every word is a term; only words capable of occupying the subject or predicate position by themselves are terms, and words that cannot do so are called syncategorematic.
Why the smallest unit comes last in Module I
Because Module I is an introduction to reasoning as a whole, and MU puts terms at the end of it as the bridge into Module II. The order is deliberate: propositions are made of terms, and inferences are made of propositions, so the syllabus introduces the subject from the top and then supplies the parts.
The practical reason terms matter is that most disputes about documents are disputes about a single term. Whether a structure is a "building", whether a person is a "workman", whether a payment is "wages", whether an activity is a "trade": in each case the whole case rests on one word, and the two chapters after this one are about what settles such a question.
Term, word and proposition
Not every word is a term. Take: "All contracts made by minors are void."
The words that can serve as subject or predicate are "contracts", "minors", "void" and the compound "contracts made by minors". These are categorematic words: they have a meaning standing alone and can occupy a term position.
The words "all", "by" and "are" cannot. They have no meaning standing alone and cannot be a subject or a predicate. They are syncategorematic: they contribute to the meaning of the proposition without being terms of it.
Three of these deserve names, because Module II uses them constantly. "All" is the quantifier, which tells you how much of the subject is being spoken about. "Are" is the copula, which joins subject to predicate and is the topic of MU's own 2.10. "Not", where it occurs, expresses quality, making the proposition negative.
A term is not the same as a proposition. "Void agreements" is a term; it asserts nothing and cannot be true or false. "Some agreements are void" is a proposition. A student who defines a term as a statement has confused the unit with what it is a unit of.
The kinds of term
Five divisions matter, and MU examines the last two in their own right in the chapters that follow.
Singular and general. A singular term applies to exactly one individual: "the Supreme Court of India", "the Indian Contract Act 1872", "Ravi". A general term applies to each member of a class taken separately: "court", "statute", "minor". Only a general term can be quantified, which is why "all Ravi" is nonsense and "all minors" is not.
Terms and Their Meaning
Collective and distributive use. A collective term names a group taken as a whole: "the Bench", "the jury", "the committee". The distinction is really about use rather than about words, and this is where students are trapped. "The judges of the Supreme Court are twenty six" is true of the judges taken together and absurd of any judge individually. "The judges of the Supreme Court are appointed by the President" is true of each one taken separately. The same words, used collectively in the first and distributively in the second. Arguing from one use to the other is the fallacy of composition or of division, met again at sequence 640.
Concrete and abstract. A concrete term names a thing possessing a quality: "honest man", "registered document". An abstract term names the quality itself: "honesty", "registration". Legal writing is full of abstract terms and they are the harder ones to define, because there is nothing to point at.
Positive and negative. MU's own next division but one, taken at sequence 190.
Relative and absolute. A relative term cannot be understood without another: "creditor" makes no sense without a debtor, "landlord" without a tenant, "mortgagee" without a mortgagor. An absolute term stands alone: "tree", "document". Almost the whole vocabulary of the law of obligations is relative, which is why MU sets inference by converse relation at topic 3.4 and why that chapter is the most legally useful in Module III.
Terms in law
A statute is a document in which a small number of terms are given fixed meanings and everything else is left to ordinary usage. That is what a definition clause is, and it is worth seeing it as a piece of logic rather than as a piece of drafting.
Three things follow, and they are the whole practical content of this chapter for a lawyer.
A defined term means what the Act says and nothing else, within that Act. The ordinary meaning is displaced. This is the law of identity of the last chapter applied to a document.
A term defined in one Act is not thereby defined in another. The same word may have three statutory meanings and one ordinary one, and choosing between them is the beginning of most arguments about construction.
An undefined term carries its ordinary meaning, and the ordinary meaning of a general term has no sharp boundary, which is why litigation about whether something falls within it is possible at all. That indeterminacy is the subject of Module IV.
Terms and Their Meaning
A worked example
An Act penalises "any person who keeps a dangerous animal without a licence". A prosecution is brought against a company that keeps a large dog at its warehouse.
Identify the terms. "Person", "dangerous animal", "licence", and the compound "person who keeps a dangerous animal without a licence". "Any" is the quantifier, "who" and "without" are syncategorematic.
Classify each. "Person" is a general term, and it is defined in the Act or by the General Clauses Act, so its meaning is fixed rather than ordinary; on the usual definition it includes a company. "Dangerous animal" is a general term left undefined, so it carries its ordinary meaning and has no sharp edge. "Licence" is a general term whose meaning is fixed by the Act's own scheme.
Notice where the case is. Not in "person": that is settled by a definition. It is entirely in "dangerous animal", an undefined general term with a vague boundary, and the argument will be about whether this dog falls inside it.
Notice also the collective trap. If the Act were about "the occupiers of the estate", a submission that the occupiers as a body kept the dog would not establish that any individual occupier kept it. Slipping between the collective and the distributive use of a term is a real and frequent error in pleadings, and the analysis of the term is what catches it.
Distinctions that carry marks
| Categorematic | Syncategorematic | |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning standing alone | Yes | No |
| Can be a subject or predicate | Yes | No |
| Examples | contract, minor, void | all, some, and, by, is |
| Singular term | General term | |
|---|---|---|
| Applies to | Exactly one individual | Each member of a class |
| Can be quantified | No | Yes |
| Examples | the Indian Contract Act 1872 | statute |
| Collective use | Distributive use | |
|---|---|---|
| Predicate is true of | The group as a whole | Each member separately |
| Example | The Bench numbers five | Every member of the Bench is a judge |
| Fallacy of confusing them | Composition, or division | The same, in reverse |
| Concrete | Abstract | |
|---|---|---|
| Names | A thing having a quality | The quality itself |
| Examples | honest man, registered document | honesty, registration |
| Relative | Absolute | |
|---|---|---|
| Understood only with | A correlative term | Nothing else |
| Examples | creditor, landlord, mortgagee | tree, document |
What this does not mean
A term is not necessarily one word. "A person of unsound mind who is disqualified by law from contracting" is a single term, because it occupies a single term position.
Collective and distributive are not two classes of word. They are two ways of using a term, and most terms admit of both.
Abstract does not mean vague. "Registration" is abstract and perfectly precise. "Reasonable" is concrete in its usual employment and thoroughly vague. The two distinctions are independent.
Terms and Their Meaning
Quick revision
Term: a word or group of words capable of being the subject or predicate of a proposition.
Categorematic words can be terms; syncategorematic words, such as quantifiers, the copula and prepositions, cannot.
Quantifier, copula, quality: "all", "are", "not". Module II is built on them.
Divisions: singular and general; collective and distributive use; concrete and abstract; positive and negative; relative and absolute.
Composition and division are the fallacies of arguing between the collective and distributive uses.
In law: a definition clause fixes a term's meaning for that Act only; an undefined term carries its ordinary and therefore fuzzy meaning, which is where litigation lives.
Test yourself
1. Define a term and distinguish categorematic from syncategorematic words.
A term is a word or group of words capable of standing as the subject or the predicate of a proposition. Categorematic words have a meaning by themselves and can occupy those positions, as "contract" and "void" can. Syncategorematic words have no meaning standing alone and cannot be terms, though they contribute to the meaning of the proposition: quantifiers such as "all", the copula "is", conjunctions and prepositions are of this kind.
2. Distinguish singular from general terms and say why the distinction matters.
A singular term applies to exactly one individual, such as "the Indian Contract Act 1872". A general term applies to each member of a class taken separately, such as "statute". The distinction matters because only general terms can be quantified: one can speak of all or some statutes, but "all the Indian Contract Act 1872" is nonsense. It also matters in Module III, where singular propositions have only one opposite.
3. Explain the collective and distributive use of a term with an example.
A term is used collectively when the predicate is asserted of the group taken as a whole, and distributively when it is asserted of each member separately. "The committee consists of seven persons" is collective and is absurd of any individual member; "every member of the committee is a graduate" is distributive. Arguing from one use to the other is the fallacy of composition or of division, and it appears in pleadings more often than it ought.
4. What is a relative term, and why do they matter to lawyers?
A relative term is one that cannot be understood without a correlative: creditor and debtor, landlord and tenant, mortgagee and mortgagor, vendor and purchaser. They matter because the vocabulary of obligations is built almost entirely out of them, so that establishing one half of the relation establishes the other. This is what makes inference by converse relation, at topic 3.4, immediately useful in practice.
5. What does a definition clause in a statute do, in logical terms?
Terms and Their Meaning
It fixes the meaning of a term for the purposes of that Act, displacing the ordinary meaning within that Act and only within it. Logically it is a précising definition: it takes a word whose ordinary boundaries are fuzzy and draws a sharp line for a particular purpose. The same word may therefore bear different meanings in different Acts, and the ordinary meaning survives everywhere the Act does not reach.
6. In "All contracts made by minors are void", list the terms and the words that are not terms.
The terms are "contracts", "minors", the compound "contracts made by minors", and "void". "All" is a quantifier, "by" is a preposition and "are" is the copula, and none of the three is a term, since none can stand as a subject or predicate and none has a meaning by itself.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.