Sentence examples for minimal situations from inspiring English sources

The semantics of the conditional involves universal quantification over minimal situations.

If e.g., Sarah owns ten donkeys, there are ten such minimal situations.

They are precisely those subsituations of Donkey Parade that are minimal situations in which a donkey appeared.

If the topic situations are of this kind, they, too, are minimal situations in which two cats caught something.

The antecedent of the conditional introduces a further restriction: we are considering only those subsituations of Donkey Parade that are minimal situations in which a donkey appeared.

On this reading, our quantification domain is some set of non-overlapping situations that are minimal situations in which I sold two teapots on the same day.

When the antecedent of a conditional contains a mass noun, negative quantifiers, or certain kinds of modified quantifier phrases, quantification over minimal situations or events seems to yield unwelcome results or isn't possible at all: 28(a) raises the question whether there ever are minimal situations or events in which snow falls.

In contrast, the situations exemplifying the proposition expressed by there is mud are all situations that contain mud and nothing else, hence do not have to be minimal situations containing mud.