Ling 726: Mathematical Linguistics, Lecture 1

V. Borschev and B. Partee, September 6, 2001 p. 1

Lecture 1. Basic Concepts of Set Theory.

0. Goals................................................................................................................................................................... 1
1. Basic Concepts of Set Theory. .......................................................................................................................... 1
1.1. Sets and elements........................................................................................................................................ 1
1.2. Specification of sets.................................................................................................................................... 2
1.3. Identity and cardinality............................................................................................................................... 3
1.4. Subsets......................................................................................................................................................... 3
1.5. Power sets .................................................................................................................................................. 3
1.6 and 1.7. Operations on sets: union, intersection, difference, complement ................................................ 4
1.8. Set-theoretic equalities ............................................................................................................................... 6
Homework 1. .......................................................................................................................................................... 6

Reading: Chapter 1 of Partee, ter Meulen, and Wall (PtMW).

0. Goals
We presuppose that you are probably familiar with most of the notions and constructions
we will discuss in this lecture. So our main goals here are to remind you of the main
notions and definitions, prepare reference material for the next lectures and discuss the
use of these notions in linguistics.

1. Basic Concepts of Set Theory.

1.1. Sets and elements

Set theory is a basis of modern mathematics, and notions of set theory are used in all
formal descriptions. The notion of set is taken as “undefined”, “primitive”, or “basic”, so
we don’t try to define what a set is, but we can give an informal description, describe
important properties of sets, and give examples. All other notions of mathematics can be
built up based on the notion of set.

Similar (but informal) words: collection, group, aggregate.

Description and terminology: a set is a collection of objects (entities) which are called
the members or elements of that set. If we have a set we say that some objects belong (or
do not belong) to this set, are (or are not) in the set. We say also that sets consist of their
elements.

Examples: the set of students in this room; the English alphabet may be viewed as the set
of letters of the English language; the set of even numbers; etc.
So sets can consist of elements of various natures: people, physical objects,
numbers, signs, other sets, etc. (We will use the words object or entity in a very broad
way to include all these different kinds of things.)

The membership criteria for a set must in principle be well-defined, and not
vague. If we have a set and an object, it is possible that we do not know whether this
object belongs to the set or not, because of our lack of information or knowledge. (E.g.
“The set of people in this room over the age of 28”, if we don’t know everyone’s age.)
But the answer should exist, at any rate in principle. It could be unknown, but it should
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V. Borschev and B. Partee, September 6, 2001 p. 2

not be vague. If the answer is vague for some putative set-description, we can not
consider that a real description of a set. Another thing: If we have a set, then for every
two elements of it, x and y, it should not be vague whether x = y, or they are different.

Sometimes we simply assume for the sake of examples that a description is not
vague when perhaps for other purposes it would be vague – e.g., the set of all red objects.

Possible examples of non-sets: “the set of all words of a given language (Russian,
English, etc)” [We will call it a non-set if we don’t believe that the class is really well-
defined]; the set of faces I saw in the street [similarly], the set of all sets. [This last one
deserves separate discussion; see discussion of Russell’s paradox on pp. 7-8] Because we
often just implicitly “stipulate” that our predicates are unambiguously clearcut and not
vague, it is hard to give clear examples of descriptions that definitely do not pick out sets.

Sets can be finite or infinite.

There is exactly one set, the empty set, which has no members at all.
A set with only one member is called a singleton or a singleton set.

Notation: A, B, C, … for sets; a, b, c, … or x, y, z, … for members.

b ΠA if b belongs to A (B ΠA if both A and B are sets and B is a member of A)
and c œ A, if c doesn’t belong to A.
∅ is used for the empty set.

1.2. Specification of sets

There are three main ways to specify a set:
(1) by listing all its members (list notation);
(2) by stating a property of its elements (predicate notation);
(3) by defining a set of rules which generates (defines) its members (recursive rules).

List notation. The first way of course is suitable only for finite sets. In this case we list
names of elements of a set, separate them by commas and enclose them in braces:
Examples: {1, 12, 45}, {George Washington, Bill Clinton}, {a,b,d,m}.

Note that we do not care about the order of elements of the list, and elements can be
listed several times. {1, 12, 45}, {12, 1, 45,1} and {45,12, 45,1} are different
representations of the same set (see below the notion of identity of sets).

Predicate notation. Example:

{xx is an even number greater than 3.}
Read: “the set of all x such that x is an even number greater than 3”
So the second part of this notation is a property the members of the set share (a condition
or a predicate which holds for members of this set).

Other examples:
{ xx is a letter of Russian alphabet}
{y y is a student of UMass and y is older than 25 }
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General form:
{ xP(x)}, where P is some predicate (condition, property).

The language to describe these predicates is not usually fixed in a strict way. But it is
known that unrestricted language can result in paradoxes. Example: { xxœ x}.
(Russell’s paradox: see PtMW pp 7-8. Type theory is one way to guarantee avoidance of
this kind of paradox: require sets always to be of higher type than their members.)

Recursive rules. (Always safe.) Example – the set E of even numbers greater than 3:
a) 4 ΠE
b) if x ΠE, then x + 2 ΠE
c) nothing else belongs to E.

The first rule is the basis of recursion, the second one generates new elements from the
elements defined before and the third rule restricts the defined set to the elements
generated by rules a and b. (The third rule should always be there; sometimes in practice
it is left implicit.)

1.3. Identity and cardinality

Two sets are identical if and only if they have exactly the same members. So A = B iff for
every x, x Œ A ¤ x Œ B.

For example, {0,2,4} = {x| x is an even natural number less than 5}

From the definition of identity it follows that there exists only one empty set; its identity
is fully determined by its absence of members. Note that empty list notation {} is not
usually used for the empty set, we have a special symbol ∅ for it.

The number of elements in a set A is called the cardinality of A, written A. The
cardinality of a finite set is a natural number. Infinite sets also have cardinalities but they
are not natural numbers. We will not discuss cardinalities of infinite sets here.

1.4. Subsets
A set A is a subset of a set B iff every element of A is also an element of B. Such a
relation between sets is denoted by A Õ B. If A Õ B and A ≠ B we call A a proper subset
of B and write A à B. (Caution: sometimes à is used the way we are using Õ.)
Both signs can be negated using the slash / through the sign.
Examples:
{a,b} Õ {d,a,b,e} and {a,b} Ã {d,a,b,e}, {a,b} Õ {a,b}, but {a,b} À {a,b}.

Note that the empty set is a subset of every set. ∅ Õ A for every set A. Why?

1.5. Power sets

The set of all subsets of a set A is called the power set of A and denoted as ℘(A) or
sometimes as 2A.
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V. Borschev and B. Partee, September 6, 2001 p. 4

For example, if A = {a,b}, ℘(A) = {∅, {a}, {b}, {a,b}}.

From the example above: a Œ A; {a} Õ A; {a} Œ ℘(A)

∅ Õ A; ∅ œ A; ∅ Œ ℘(A); ∅ Õ ℘(A)

1.6 and 1.7. Operations on sets: union, intersection, difference,

complement
We define several operations on sets. Let A and B be arbitrary sets.

The union of A and B, written A » B, is the set whose elements are just the
elements of A or B or of both. In the predicate notation the definition is
A » B =def { x x Œ A or x Œ B}

Examples. Let K = {a,b}, L = {c,d} and M = {b,d}, then

K»L = {a,b,c,d}
K » M = {a,b,d}
L»M = {b,c,d}
(K » L) » M = K » (L » M) = {a,b,c,d}
K»K =K
K » ∅ = ∅ » K = K = {a,b}.

There is a nice method for visually representing sets and set-theoretic operations,
called Venn diagrams. Each set is drawn as a circle and its members represented by
points within it. The diagrams for two arbitrarily chosen sets are represented as partially
intersecting – the most general case – as in Figure 1–1 below. The region designated ‘1’
contains elements which are members of A but not of B; region 2, those members in B but
not in A; and region 3, members of both B and A. Points in region 4 outside the diagram
represent elements in neither set.
The Venn diagram for the union of A and B is shown in Figure 1–2. The results of
operations in this and other diagrams are shown by shading areas.

[PtMW, p.13, Fig.1-1, 1-2]

 Ling 726: Mathematical Linguistics, Lecture 1
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The intersection of A and B, written A « B, is the set whose elements are just the
elements of both A and B. In the predicate notation the definition is
A « B =def { x x Œ A and x Œ B}
Examples:

K«L = ∅
K « M = {b}
L«M = {d}
(K « L) « M = K « (L « M) = ∅
K«K =K
K « ∅ = ∅ « K = ∅.

The general case of intersection of arbitrary sets A and B is represented by the

Venn diagram of Figure 1–3. The intersection of three arbitrary sets A,B and C is shown
in the Venn diagram of Figure 1–4.

[PtMW, p. 14, Fig 1-3, p.15, Fig. 1-4]

Another binary operation on arbitrary sets is the difference, written A – B, which

‘subtracts’ from A all elements which are in B. The predicate notation defines this
operation as follows:
A – B =def { x x Œ A and x œ B}

Examples:
K–L = {a,b}
K–M = {a}
L–M = {c}
K–K =∅
K–∅ =K
∅ – K = ∅.

The Venn diagram for the set-theoretic difference is shown in Figure 1–5.

A – B is also called the relative complement of B relative to A. This operation is to

be distinguished from the complement of a set A, written A’, which is the set consisting of
everything not in A. In predicate notation
A’ =def { x x œ A}

It is natural to ask, where do these objects come from which do not belong to A?
In this case it is presupposed that there exists a universe of discourse and all other sets are
subsets of this set. The universe of discourse is conventionally denoted by the symbol U.
Then we have
A’ =def U – A
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V. Borschev and B. Partee, September 6, 2001 p. 6

The Venn diagram with a shaded section for the complement of A is shown in
Figure1–6.

[PtMW, p.16, Fig. 1-5, p.16, Fig. 1-6]

1.8. Set-theoretic equalities

There are a number of general laws about sets which follow from the definitions of set-
theoretic operations, subsets, etc. A useful selection of these is shown below. They are
grouped under their traditional names. These equations below hold for any sets X, Y, Z:

1. Idempotent Laws
(a) X » X = X (b) X « X = X

2. Commutative Laws
(a) X » Y = Y » X (b) X « Y = Y « X

3. Associative Laws
(a) (X » Y) » Z = X » (Y » Z) (b) (X « Y) «Z = X « (Y « Z)

4. Distributive Laws
(a) X » (Y « Z) = (X » Y) « (X » Z) (b) X « (Y » Z) = (X « Y) » (X « Z)

5. Identity Laws
(a) X » ∅ = X (c) X « ∅ = ∅
(b) X » U = U (d) X « U = X

6. Complement Laws
(a) X » X’ = U (c) X « X’ = ∅
(b) (X’)’ = X (d) X – Y = X « Y’

7. DeMorgan’s Laws
(a) (X » Y)’ = X’ « Y’ (b) (X « Y)’ = X’ » Y’

8. Consistency Principle
(a) X Õ Y iff X » Y = Y (b) X Õ Y iff X « Y = X

We will see later that operations on subsets of a set form a Boolean algebra.

Homework 1.
1) Exercises from PtMW:
Chapter 1, pp. 23-26. ##2, 5, 6(a,g,m), 7(a,f,l), 8(b,c), 9b, 11a,c,d.