9.9.2 Designators

Summary of things learned so far

First, we give a little summary of what we have learned so far.

Now we have learned that a concept has a type and a referent:

   [Type: Referent]

and that the referent is made up of two parts:

1. A quantifier
2. A designator

The quantifier-part of a referent can be one of two kinds:

1. The existential quantifier (blank or ""), maning "There exists...", or
2. A defined quantifier.

The defined quantifiers can be one of the following kinds:

• The universal quantifier, , meaning "Every" or "All",
• The "unspecified set", "{*}", meaning "plural",
• A quantity, such as "@2", "@18 seconds", or "@100 grams".
• Collections, such as "{Romeo,Juliet}".

Designators

We have already described quantifiers, and now we describe designators. Recall that a designator can be one of the following:

1. A literal,
2. A locator, or
3. A descriptor.

In brief:

1. A literal is "a syntactic representation of the form of the referent" (e.g., 'This is a sentence');
2. A locator is a symbol that specifies how the referent may be located (e.g., John); and
3. A descriptor is a conceptual graph which describes the referent.

These will be exemplified in more detail below.