singular causal statement See CAUSATION, COVER -. ING LAW MODE. singular term, an expression, such as ‘Zeus’, ‘the President’, or ‘my favorite chair’, that can be the grammatical subject of what is semantically a subject-predicate sentence. By contrast, a general term, such as ‘table’ or ‘swam’ is one that can serve in predicative position. It is also often said that a singular term is a word or phrase that could refer or ostensibly refer, on a given occasion of use, only to a single object, whereas a general term is predicable of more than one object. Singular terms are thus the expressions that replace, or are replaced by, individual variables in applications of such quantifier rules as universal instantiation and existential generalization or flank ‘%’ in identity statements. See also THEORY OF DESCRIPTION. G.F.S.