It is clear that only what is essential to the most
general propositional form may be included in its description--for
otherwise it would not be the most general form. The existence of a general
propositional form is proved by the fact that there cannot be a proposition
whose form could not have been foreseen (i.e. constructed). The general
form of a proposition is: This is how things stand.
4.51 Suppose that I am given all elementary propositions: then I can simply
ask what propositions I can construct out of them. And there I have all
propositions, and that fixes their limits.
4.52 Propositions comprise all that follows from the totality of all
elementary propositions (and, of course, from its being the totality of
them all ). (Thus, in a certain sense, it could be said that all
propositions were generalizations of elementary propositions.)
4.53 The general propositional form is a variable.
5 A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. (An
elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)
5.01 Elementary propositions are the truth-arguments of propositions.
5.02 The arguments of functions are readily confused with the affixes of
names. For both arguments and affixes enable me to recognize the meaning of
the signs containing them. For example, when Russell writes '+c', the 'c'
is an affix which indicates that the sign as a whole is the addition-sign
for cardinal numbers.
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