This doesn't have to do with logic strictly, but I think the term you're looking for is "functional square root" or "half-iterate", and their generalizations. Given a function f, the half iterate of f is the function g such that g.g = f, where the period denotes composition. You can generalize to g^n = f, of course. -Robert See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_square_root On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Adam P. Goucher <apgoucher@gmx.com> wrote:
Dear all:
Negation and tautology are both square-roots of tautology, as:
"This statement is true." = "This statement is not not true."
Do there exist words (in any language) which act as cube-roots of tautology (excluding the trivial case of tautology itself)? Or, more generally, Nth roots of tautology, for arbitrary natural numbers N?
If we did have such words in the English language, what logical effect would they have on the meaning of a sentence?
Sincerely,
Adam P. Goucher _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun