Question

Which of the following sentences can be true or false?

____(i) Make a claim (e.g., the Earth revolves around the sun)
____(ii) Ask a question (e.g., What time is it?)
____(iii) Give a command (e.g., Close the door!)
____(iv) utter an exclamation (e.g., yippy!)
____(v) to greet or say goodbye to someone (e.g., hello).

Accepted Answer

(i) Make a claim. (e.g., the Earth revolves around the sun)

Extra:
What is truth?

by Dr. Kenneth Hochstetter, Contributing Author

To this general and somewhat obscure question, one often receives a variety of quite obscure

answers. Such answers include, “Truth is Love,” “Truth is relative,” “Truth is in the eyes of the beholder,” “God is truth,” Science is truth,” “There is no truth.”

What should we make of these answers, or even the original question itself? One doesn’t know quite what to say. Perhaps the reason why we get such a diverse and obscure set of answers is that the original question is itself too general and obscure. Let’s make it more precise.

What is it for a claim to be true? That is, what makes a claim true? Before considering possible answers, let’s make sure we are clear about what is being asked. Towards this end, let’s back up a bit. We use sentences (spoken or written) to make claims. However, we also use sentences for other expressions.

We use sentences to:
____(i) Make a claim (e.g., the Earth revolves around the sun)
____(ii) Ask a question (e.g., What time is it?)
____(iii) Give a command (e.g., Close the door!)
____(iv) utter an exclamation (e.g., yippy!)
____(v) to greet or say goodbye to someone (e.g., hello).

The first step towards clarifying our question, then, is to make sure it is clear that we are discussing only sentences that make claims, not the others. One big difference between sentences that make claims and the others is that only a sentence making a claim can be true or false. The others cannot.

Make E.G Sentences Claim Question Earth Revolves Sun