Vocabulary (the knowledge of words' meanings in a language) and grammar (knowledge of words' proper relation to one another in a language) can function both as prerequisites as well as topics of focus of verbal reasoning. In the former capacity, they are used to form propositions and arguments (see below), while in the latter capacity they are the subject of analysis and evaluation, where verbal reasoning synthesizes linguistic information and analyzes relationships among component parts of sentences, words, and concepts. Propositions The basic element of reasoning (verbal, or otherwise) is the proposition. A proposition is simply the meaning behind a declarative sentence that can be either true or false (note: special care is taken here to mention that the proposition is specifically what is meant by such a sentence, and is not the actual sentence itself). In other words, a proposition is something that one can know, believe, think, assume, or so on. Worth explicitly mentioning here is that only some (and not necessarily all) statements count as propositions. This is because the defining feature of a proposition is that it is necessarily making some assertion which can intelligibly be assigned a truth value. In other words: statements are only propositions if they are Truth-apt. To illustrate this principled distinction, let us consider the following two statements: "The sky is blue." "Tell me your name." The first sentence is a proposition because it purports a fact which is either true or untrue. The second sentence, however, is not a proposition, because it does not appear to make any true/false assertion (that is, there is nothing meant by the sentence that one could say were or weren't "true"). Premises and conclusions A premise is a proposition in an argument which will justify or induce a conclusion. That is, premises are propositions which, if true, allow for the logical inference of an associated proposition which is known as the "conclusion". To give an example: the statement "John is a bachelor" is a premise in the one-sentence argument "John is a bachelor, therefore John is unmarried", and the conclusion is that "John is unmarried". Premises may be treated somewhat differently according to the specific type of argument in which they occur. In a deductive argument, premises are often assumed to be true — regardless of whether or not they really are. This is juxtaposed against inductive arguments, in which there is merely a